Around this time last year, we were telling you about the Rocketbook Wave, a smart notebook that allowed you to write in it, upload your notes to cloud services with just the point of a smartphone, and then reuse the pages by sticking the thing in a microwave to erase the ink. The Wave raised $1.3 million on Indiegogo. Afer a year of development, Rocketbook blasted back onto the scene on November 16th with its new and improved notebook, the Everlast. Its Kickstarter campaign just wrapped up and from almost 30,000 backers over 60 days, it raked in $1.8 million dollars. Notebooks have never been so noteworthy.
The RocketBook Everlast, as its predecessor, comes along with the RocketBook app, and features patent-pending image recognition technology to capture and send notes to a number of cloud services. The cloud-syncing is facilitated by a series of symbols on the bottom of notebook pages; each symbol can be used to assign a different destination (Evernote, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.), so when the user fills a particular symbol in with their pen, the system knows the storage destination to which to send the notes. Users just hover their phone over the pages (visible through the app’s camera) and the app automatically captures them for store and send.
New in the Everlast notebook are QR codes on the corners of each page to tell the companion app the page number of each scan. As with the Wave, each page has a solid black border to make it easier for the app to find and frame the pages on most backdrop surfaces. The app also crops and enhances each page so digital notes appear more crisp and vibrant than the original photos.
Another major feature has changed with the latest generation: no more “heat-it-to-delete-it”. RocketBook Everlast isn’t designed to erase in the microwave. Although a novel feature, the limitation of erasure with heat was that slight residue from the pen ink still remained on the pages. Based on customer experience with the Wave, Rocketbook suggested that the pages can be used five times, though some users had success with up to 20 uses. The wet-erase Everlast pages will provide a much longer reuse period.
Unlike whiteboard books that require users to use markers, Rocketbook notebooks allow you to use actual pens; the Everlast supports the Pilot Frixion ballpoint pen, which can be purchased through a number of retailers. Even though the ink is engineered to be smear free, in the Everlast, it is easily is wiped away with a moist paper towel–the pages are made of a waterproof synthetic poly blend. The one caveat with the ink is that if it’s left on pages for months, it might leave a faint mark. Rocketbook recommends wiping the pages clean at most every few weeks.
RocketBook Everlast comes in two sizes, both different dimensions from the Wave. The first is Letter Size (8.5 x 11 inches) and is 32 pages. Then, there’s Executive Size (how sexy does that sound): it’s 6 x 8 inches and is 36 pages. Both a big step down from the Wave’s beefy 80 page package.
During the campaign, the books were priced at $34 for a single unit and a Frixion pen. The first run is expected to be delivered in April. If you weren’t quick enough to get in on the Everlast but you’re antsy to get your hands on the Wave, you can pick one up on the company website.
