Rocketbook Review: The Infinite Smart Notebook

Disclaimer: This is not a paid or requested review, and I get absolutely no kickback from it. I own two Rocketbook notebooks myself (a full-sized Core and a small Rocketbook Mini for my purse), so you can probably guess where this is going.

I was originally a hand-writer. I enjoy the act of handwriting, putting words onto the paper directly with a pen and ink. Typing and dictating might be faster and more efficient, but there's a part of me that just loves the charm of an old-fashioned scribble. When my wrist problems developed about a year ago, I was forced to look into alternatives to typing to get my writing done. Repetitive strain is vicious if you type a lot. These days, I dictate most of my professional writing (including this post) but I wanted something a little more comfortable when I'm writing for fun.

Enter Rocketbook. Rocketbook, a self-proclaimed “smart notebook,” offers to be the future of manual notebooks. Each or Rocketbook’s spiral-bound products is reusable when used with the special FriXion pens that they come with, easy to erase, and easy to store and transcribe notes when paired with the companion app. I already went through about five or six notebooks a year. That made this clear win.

Now that it’s been several months since my first getting my Rocketbook Core, let's take a look at how it adds up in the long run.

Ease, versatility, and condition: The Rocketbook is incredibly easy to use. Everything about it is intuitive. The gel ink from the FriXion pens glides on easily and seldom smudges, and when I want to erase I have the option of using the pen’s eraser (yes, these pens come with erasers, and they work even on ordinary paper) or of wiping a soft, wet cloth across the page to erase. I've already found countless ways to use my Rocketbook as well, from writing exercises and plot planning to taking notes during meetings to scheduling my to-do list for the day. Quite simply, the Rocketbook is one of the most useful writing tools I've ever encountered in the physical-writing sphere.

Reusability: The Rocketbook Core was originally marketed as the Everlast, and it's supposed to be an infinite notebook. I'm about five or six uses into mine, and I have many more to go. But is it infinite? By now, most pages in my notebook do have residue from earlier lines that I've written. No matter how thoroughly I try to wash them, there are always traces left of what I had written before. There's also a mild concern of the size of the notebook. It's only thirty-two pages long, substantially smaller than what you typically pick up at the store. This makes for easier erasing when I reach the end, but I wonder if that makes it less reusable in the long run with a heavier emphasis on the fewer pages. I still have a long way to go until I can’t use it anymore, and by my estimate, it's still a better buy than a standard notebook.

Use of the Rocketbook App: I can't talk about Rocketbook without talking about the app. Rocketbook’s app makes it easy to store and send everything you want. From the onset, you can set up seven destinations in your notebook. When you write, you mark these destinations on the page, and when the time comes to scan them in, the app automatically sends your notes your way. What I love about this is that it's easy to pair pages together even if they were not sequential in the notebook. I use that feature all the time. As for the transcription, I can't say it delivers, but then again, I haven't found anything that has. Maybe my handwriting is just too cryptic.

Overall: In the end, I love this notebook. As I mentioned earlier, I've already written through it five or six times and plan to keep using it many more times in the future. I love how easy it is to store and send information wherever I want, and the reusability makes it a flexible tool for whenever I need it. I look forward to watching this technology develop and allowing more options for hand-writers like me to compete on a productive scale.