review – While I always work on my computer, I prefer to take physical notes. I find that having one place to keep all my thoughts and schedules in one place makes me more organized. My notes are divided into two different categories, notes that I want to refer to forever and things that I need to memorize for hours and then never need to refer to again. This meant I was constantly wasting notebook pages, burying important notes in useless waste with just a few doodles. The RocketBook Everyday Planner is a reusable notebook with a companion app that scans and digitizes notes for easy organization and reference. Once the banknote has been scanned, the pages are easily “cleaned” with a damp cloth. With a multi-page layout, it allows me to dynamically keep track of my schedule, to-do list, and any random notes I wish to keep track of right now. After finishing my notes, I can wipe the page clean and start over without any waste!
What is it?
The Rocketbook Everyday Planner is a reusable notebook that can be scanned with the appropriate app, digitized with any note, and wiped clean with a damp cloth. Notebooks must use erasable pens.
What’s in this box?
- Rocketbook Daily Plan
- Pilot Frixion 0.7 Black Pen
- Microfiber cloth
- User Guide
Design and Features
The notebook itself has a nice plastic front and back cover that protects the pages inside. The pages themselves are thicker than standard paper, more cardstock-like, and have a plastic feel, but are not sticky at all. There are seven different layouts, from calendars and lists to lined and dotted paper. It has a plastic spiral binding for smooth page turns and a full fold/fold back, so the laptop takes up less space.
The inside cover is a list of different symbols. Each of these symbols represents where the scanning application sent the file. Each of these locations can be customized within the app and easily written on the inside cover for quick reference. On the right page is a three-month overview, with one column for each month, and rows for different goals.
The next set of pages are quarterly monthly layouts. Each month is a column, three months per page.
Since the quarterly layout doesn’t offer much room to write every day, the next layout is a two-page monthly calendar with enough pages for a three-month plan.
If you prefer weekly organization, the planner also has six two-page weekly layouts that organize time from morning, afternoon, and evening.
A final interesting layout is the “To-Do List”, which provides checkboxes to keep track of what’s been done and what’s left.
Each page has the same icon, printed in light grey at the bottom of the page, to match the icon on the inside cover. After setting the location in the application, you can mark an icon before scanning the page so that it automatically sends the scanned page to a specific location without having to specify the location in the application.
Wiping the notebook is super easy. Just dampen a corner of the provided microfiber cloth and wipe! One thing I did notice is that the pages stick together when wet, so make sure to let the pages air dry for a few minutes before turning or closing the notebook. Another interesting “feature” of the notebook is the plastic texture. It generates enough static to continuously collect any type of pet hair! The fur gets brushed off easily, but does create odd bumps if it gets caught under the page you’re writing on.
It is very important to note that for the laptop to be reusable, a compatible pen must be used. Rocketbook offers a pen for their planner, the Pilot Frixion is an erasable pen that uses a grey tip on the bottom of the body. These pens are available in a variety of colors and widths.
application
I have to add a warning before this part of the comment, my handwriting is very small. When I say small, I mean really small. I previously purchased a set of pens compatible with the Rocketbook Everyday Planner, but it was 0.38 instead of the 0.7 pen provided. All my notes are made with my personal pen unless otherwise stated.
Scanning pages is very simple, just place your device on top of the page and it will automatically scan the page for you. It’s important to note that you need to stay still or the scan results will be blurry. After scanning all the pages you want, the app will prompt you to choose a location to send the scan to. It then allows you to view scanned pages, rename them, and add tags for later reference.
The app also allows you to scan multiple pages at once, which is key to the two-page layout. The two page layouts are automatically stitched together by the application and displayed as one image, while the single page layouts are merged into a single file, but remain as separate pages, represented by green circles with numbers inside.
A cool feature is the app’s ability to recognize lists and create a smart list from them. Now sometimes it will also mistake a simple note for a list, but you don’t have to add it to an actual smart list. Your Smart List can then be sorted and reconciled numerically in the app.
Now, if you look at the list I generated, there are some glaring misspellings that end in complete gibberish. This is where I start having problems with the application. As mentioned earlier, my handwriting is very small, which makes it difficult for the AI system to determine which letters I actually wrote.
The scan above is a general test of pen and scanner functionality. As you can see when you scan the text, taking pictures with your phone camera is much clearer. However, the phone camera won’t automatically transcribe your notes for you, another feature I’m super excited to try.
Transcribe creates a Word document containing automatically generated text from your notes. You can choose to include images of scanned pages in your document for reference, or omit them. Below is a scan of the notes I want to transcribe. As you can see, this is a difficult note to transcribe because there is a small chart and I didn’t follow the standard lines of the page, (the black box is just to separate it from the white background).
and the corresponding transcription:
Broken authentication session management
Availability – Average
popular
Detection average
Enter – serious
Avereniticari
adjust
user
-wclosite
track nussard
Aurth Cooler Theft – Zerose in ton sotto-spur an ass rust, sak…
meeting so this is proposte lab witte, som man waited for a long time
Account Management – Bara fora Lage, desores crournis, Lapierre
attacker
rest again
Protee coolice – only see Elag here, raake son they care about marked suure
Reduced Risk Window – Let Session Expiration Quickly Relearn Critical Operations
Handia account management – allows and encourages strong posowong’s, implements regin roke lar and occars
Now I’m not sure about you, but I don’t get it. Scan or Transcribe. Here is a photo of the same note taken with my phone camera.
As you can see, it’s much clearer. The reason I take a photo showing the full page is the way the app scans the page. It requires viewing the entire page to register and scan properly. But even in photos, it’s easier to read, and best of all, it’s easy to zoom in and see the annotations clearly.
I like the concept of being able to quickly scan my notes and convert them to PDF and send them to a chosen destination. But since my handwriting is so small, the transcription function turned everything into Latin, and the scans were too blurry for me. I quickly stopped using the app because I found that taking pictures with my phone camera was clearer than scanning with the app, and I didn’t really take notes that I needed to save in the planner.
what do I like
- Multiple layouts for calendars and organizations
- The page feels close enough to paper and doesn’t feel too plastic
- Any type of erasable pen or marker can be used
what would i change
- The app’s ability to recognize tiny handwriting
final thoughts
I really like the reusability of this notebook. The scanned part of the notebook is useless to me due to my handwriting, but the fact that I jot down anything random without the guilt of wasting paper is a complete win for me. So if you’re like me who likes to jot down but don’t want to incur paper waste, I definitely recommend the Rocketbook Everyday Planner.
Price: $37.99 administrative and $39.99 letter
where to buy: rocket book
resource: Samples for this review are provided by rocket book
