If you're the type of person who likes to work things out on pen and paper, a student who would rather take handwritten notes in class or a professional who prefers to jot down ideas in ink, the Wacom Bamboo Folio or Slate could be a great tool for you. I was able to email the text transcription, upload it into Notes and send it via text. That said, the mistakes were minor enough that I could easily decipher what the words were supposed to be. The app accurately transcribed my alphabet, but it had only about an 80-percent success rate with my grocery list.
My handwriting isn't the best, but it isn't doctor-level chicken scrawl, either. I tested the app's transcription feature with a simple uppercase and lowercase alphabet, and with a grocery list.
In contrast, Livescribe's app converts handwriting to ASCII for free, as does Windows 10's handwriting keyboard. The transcription option, which provides text recognition for the Bamboo products, is available only in the paid version of the Inkspace app. While handwritten notes and drawings can be a great way to capture your creative impulses and ideas, having the ability to convert your scribbles into ASCII text is essential for editing and sharing your work.
Owners of the Bamboo Folio and Bamboo Slate get a three-month free subscription to Inkspace Plus, after which you can get the service for a discounted rate of $2.99 per month, as opposed to the regular $4.99-per-month rate. It offers 50GB storage, enables professional sharing in teams and allows real-time collaboration in editable digital ink files.
The Inkspace Plus subscription includes more advanced features, such as the ability to convert handwriting to rich text, vector export in SVG and the ability to search handwritten notes. It provides 5GB of storage in the cloud and allows easy sharing across different devices, including smartphones, tablets and computers. The Basic version is free you just create a Wacom ID to sign up. There are two subscriptions available for the Inkspace app: Basic and Plus. The app also shows you how much battery life remains on the pen. You can share your documents to Google Drive, Notes, email and more while also syncing to cloud services such as Evernote, Dropbox and OneNote. I found it especially satisfying to literally wipe items off my to-do lists. The editing feature allows you to delete notes, draw and annotate on the files, split notes into separate documents, and combine files. The Bamboo pen actually looks so much like a standard pen that it easily could be misplaced and lost in a backpack, so the clip that attaches it to the pad really comes in handy. You simply twist the pen, and the ballpoint nib rotates out. You can buy additional, proprietary cartridges from the Wacom Store for $9.99 for a pack of three. It does not have a separate charging port and, at first glance, appears to be a standard ballpoint pen with a metal clip. The included pen is thinner than other styluses I've used. For a student walking to classes all day, or for a professional often on the go, the weight is definitely something to consider. The only real difference between the two is that the Folio has the fold-over cover, and internal slots for business cards and additional paper materials. The larger of the two Bamboo Slate sizes weighs only 1 pound. Once you factor in the weight of a pad of paper, you could easily be carrying around 2.5 pounds of additional weight in your bag. At 13.3 x 10.6 inches and 1.8 pounds, the Bamboo Folio is fairly heavy for its size.