Wacom’s Bamboo Sparks Brings Paper Back Into The Writing Fold (Hands-on)

Do this as often as you need until you truly do make your idea come to life. It uses an electro-magnetic resonance field to communicate with the Spark’s pen, and can save up to 100 pages of notes at a time. And while the Spark does seem to simplify the number of steps required to sync the device to the cloud, the user still has to tote around yet another relatively large device, in addition to a phone, laptop, tablet, etc. Whether busy professionals will choose to add the extra hardware to their daily routines remains to be seen. All you need to do after you’ve finished writing down your notes or sketching your ideas, is to press that round button on the folio.

Good news for those of you who lament the slow disappearance of actual pen and paper writing in today’s digital society; graphics tablet company Wacom has just announced the Bamboo Spark, a “smart folio” that turns handwritten notes into digital files. The device is activated by pressing a button on the Centre of the folio and whatever you sketch henceforth will be saved on your “Bluetooth” enabled Android and iOS device, thanks to the Bamboo Spark app.

The Wacom pen and paper system essentially underscores a “smart” portfolio which brings longhand back into fashion; enabling users to capture ideas in physical and digital ink, and save them for later reference or for sharing online.

The Bamboo Spark folio will give you approximately 8 hours of continuous use and you can charge it via its USB port. The Bamboo Spark pen uses ink that is specifically designed to work in conjunction with Wacom’s EMR technology and you can purchase ink refills on the Wacom e-store, and each should last for up to three months of use. From here they can be edited and exported to Evernote, Dropbox or Wacom’s own cloud service. The Bamboo Spark app is responsible for the digital capture and transfer of hand-written notes and sketches directly to any paired smartphone or tablet. Gay says, “In 2016, Wacom will continue to build advanced software features into Bamboo Spark such as handwriting recognition and other leading-edge applications”. Wacom is trying hard to bridge the digital gap between actually drawing something on a paper versus using a Stylus enabled device to draw/write it digitally.

There are three Bamboo Spark models, but all of them will have the same SRP of $159.95. The Bamboo Spark starts shipping in October from electronic retailers.