For those of you who missed out the Aldi deal, it's now available without having to rush to Aldi in early for just $9.01 more.
This gadget allows you to write on normal paper with their pen, and have whatever you write gets captured digitally on the pad. You can then send your notes/sketches to your phone or tablet and store it in Evernote or whatever else their app supports.
Delivery is $4.95.
The most popular review on YouTube, and the text version of it.
I have bought one with the sleeve from the previous deal in JB Hi-Fi for $79.
It's great when it works, but most of the time, i have to re-pair the bamboo spark with my LG G4 to sync the notes taken.
As for the pen, it needs more pressure than my usual handwriting habit, which can cause some lines missing in the digital version, but nothing to be worried about so far, as most of the words still can be read quite easy.
The pen tip itself is a bit bolder to my liking. I usually use thinner tip pen.
It seems the pen refilled is proprietary and usually it means expensive.
Thank you.
Just had a quick search and it looks to be reasonably cheap [$5 each here] (https://buywacom.com.au/bamboo-spark-ink-cartridges.html)
Edit: formatting appears to be broken, any idea what I did wrong?
Remove the space before the open bracket.
Thanks, I'll keep that in mind in future.
Its not cheap. Each refill is less than half of the normal refill as it is very short in length.
Hmm, will probably be like a printer then, the printer itself is cheap but its the ink which costs a fortune.
$5 for an ink cartridge is reasonable to me.
That's the main thing holding me back from getting one - much cheaper to just use a notepad and pen:
http://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/value-a4-sp…
http://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/keji-ballpo…
$1.67 for a 120-page notepad and 3 pens - I guess what you are paying for is the convenience of copying your notes into digital format without needing to scan your notepad.
Another thing I am wondering is how well the Wacom can recognise someone's handwriting.
The review efface linked to is good and covers everything.
They said that the handwriting recognition is problematic.
review suggests it's not for me
I tried a livescribe echo a few years ago, promising but pen was way too bulky for me.
Can anyone suggest a good system they've used ? Price is not such an issue, a good digital pen system will save me heaps of time and hence money.
Paying $9.01 more!?, that's just unOzBargainy
Well you can't pay $9.01 less anywhere now. :)
My apologies….
Saw some in a country Aldi this morning, so check your local to see if they still have some.
Checked mine and they had stock left. Time to use this baby once and then turn it into a glorified dust catcher.
Mine didn't. JB wouldn't price match them at the time either.
Stock at officeworks too, so should be able to price beat.
With very limited stock…
Glebe, NSW
Fitzroy, VIC
Strathpine, QLD
Keswick, SA
Marion, SA
Subiaco, WA
East Victoria Park, WA
Jandakot, WA
Hermit Park, QLD
Geelong, VIC
Ferntree Gully, VIC
Newcastle West, NSW
Orange, NSW
Fairy Meadow, NSW
Thanks for the list!
$9.01 more. That says it all, unless people were not able to Officeworks Price beat the last one.
SO was anyone able to get Officeworks to price beat this when it was on sale at Aldi?
Man that's a lot of money for something you can almost replace by taking a picture of your finished drawing with your phone camera. I mean sure you won't be able to go back and forth in time to see yourself build up the image but for the time, effort and hassle, I don't think that's enough of a selling point.
Searching is the only killer-feature that I can see here. If the OCR is better because it has access to the dynamic pressure data as you build up each word, then that would make it worth it. If you can OCR your photo of your own handwriting just as well after the fact, then not so attractive.
Are there tools that make use of that for OCR?
Man that's a lot of money for something you can almost replace by taking a picture of your finished drawing with your phone camera.
You can get vector PDFs from this, which you cannot from a phone camera. Vector output isn't for everyone, but those who can use it (for diagrams/sketches/ballpoint art) would find it invaluable.
It's also quicker to press a button and save a page compared to making sure lighting is even, and making sure the capture app you use has marked the borders of the page correctly.
But as with all gadgets, not everything is for everyone. I can certainly see how this wouldn't be useful to some people, but at the same time I can see how useful it can be to others.
Yep okay if you do that often I can see it would be a time saver, but converting raster to vector can be done with free editors like GIMP + Inkscape.
Sure, you can also do it in Photoshop. But the point is to save time. Pressing one button vs hoping it gets converted nicely later on, especially from a photo. Conversion will be far more difficult if you did your sketch on ruled or grid paper too, as the lines would be converted as well.
just saw 4 at Aldi in Brandon Park in the glass cabinet. Start of the week there were about 3 at Forest Hill Aldi.
After seeing the youtube reviews and demos, seems like a waste of time. The ink cartridge is tiny and it takes ages to send to the tablet. Might as well just take a picture of your notes
Office Lens app does a good job of taking a photo of a handwritten page and it is free.
I find it takes a bit of fiddling around each time in terms of detecting the outline of the notepad, unless lighting is good and the background is dark and uncluttered. OCR doesn't work very well compared to digitised handwriting capture, and you'll also capture the grids/lines on the page. That can suit some people just fine, but not everyone.
I can vouch from fiddling with OCR that handwriting capture will always work better because there is more to analyse than just the final result. Plenty of technical papers explaining why.
OCR on printed text however does not require handwriting capture. That is what Office Lens and many better apps do very well.
OCR on printed text however does not require handwriting capture. That is what Office Lens and many better apps do very well.
Yes, but we were talking about this Wacom device whose sole purpose is to capture handwriting or sketches. k0ka2 says Office Lens does the same thing and is free, I said it's not the same as OCR on a photo doesn't work very well - there's a difference between having a collection of photos, and an OCR'ed searchable collection of handwritten notes.
If one was simply wanting to OCR printed text, this Bamboo Spark certainly wouldn't help! :)
Thanks OP. Quite a few left in Doncaster VIC.
Can someone who owns one of these please give a lost of pros and cons they've experience?