Portronics Electropen 4 review: pens the gap between analog and digital
If you are an artist or a part time illustrator, you would find yourself busy with a pencil and paper. With the two, you can occupy yourself while giving out a piece of art to the world, even if no one cares. When something good comes out on paper, you often feel like sharing it through social media and this is where one issue creeps up. How to put your artwork on paper to a digital screen?
There are three possible solutions to this, the first one is taking a photograph from your smartphone which doesn’t always gives out the best results. The second option is to have an expensive tablet with an additional stylus, which again though practical, is not a cheap solution. The third idea is to use something that replicates the work you do on the paper and puts it centimetre by centimetre on the screen. Portronics thinks that the third idea is certainly better, which is why they have rolled out the Electropen 4.
The Electropen 4 is a smart pen (yes, the world is moving to smartpens), i.e it is a pen that replicates your efforts on paper and puts it on a digital canvas. The pen comes with an ultrasonic receiver, which is Bluetooth-enabled to pair with your smartphone, tablet or PC. Additionally, you can also use a USB cable to record your doodling inputs on a PC or laptop.
The Electropen 4 is not the first one to be in the market (obviously the ‘4’ in Electropen 4 marks the version of the product), which is evident from the build of the product. It’s not a clumsy cylindrical rod with a refill inside — it is a proper ball-point pen. It looks like a pen and certainly feels like one when you hold it and attempt to write on a paper. You can change the refills, available easily in the market. Even though the pen has an embedded microphone for recording audio notes, it is comfortable and feels as weird to use as a regular pen that costs Rs 10 in the market.
The familiarity of the pen goes away when you notice a proprietary charging port at the bottom. The weirdness also gets enhanced when you see the receiver that looks like an old flash drive with a screen and some buttons on it. The receiver can store up to 100 A4 size pages digitally and can also create a video of the entire writing process.
The Electropen 4's ultrasonic transceiver needs to be placed on the top-centre of the notepad while using it. The pen is battery powered and is pre-paired with the battery-powered transceiver. You don't need to have any additional drivers or applications installed on your PC as you can use the Pen for regular writing on screen or as a mouse pointer too. The transceiver has an internal storage, a rechargeable battery, a power button and a Bluetooth pairing button, along with a small LCD display to show the status. It is very easy to use, simple to operate and you can get going within a few seconds — no technical knowledge required.
As mentioned earlier, you can use it the pen as a regular writing tool on paper when you want to. However, the moment you feel the need to transfer your work from the paper to an electronic display, you have to clip the receiver on the top of the page and switch it on (press the green button) to activate the ‘digital mode’. Once you connect the receiver to a PC using the USB cable, you have a pen that’s analogue and digital at the same time.
At this point, we should clarify the usage scenarios. If you want to transfer your work to a computer, you need to follow the above-mentioned method. While doing that, we noticed that the Electropen 4 is in its zone with computers that run on Windows 10, particularly with the Windows Ink app. While there is much software available for the Windows platform, it doesn't always gel with them smoothly, especially on older systems running Windows XP, 7 and 8. So, if you want to take down your notes or illustrations on a PC, make sure it runs on Windows 10 with the Anniversary Update installed, for best results.
The other usage scenario is for taking digital copies of your 'paperwork' on modern mobile devices, i.e. smartphones and tablets. Although Portronics suggests an app for both the Android and iOS platforms, we would recommend using a third party app for doing so as the suggested one seems to have compatibility issues. We tested it on the ‘Smarson pen’ app on an Android smartphone running Android 7.0 and we have to say that the user experience is appreciable. Because mobile devices are smart, they avoid that pesky wire connection process and use Bluetooth for pairing with the device (simply press and hold the Bluetooth button till the display shows that it’s ready to connect. Although the pen movement is nowhere close to the accuracy of the S Pen from Samsung and the Apple Pencil, it does the work for you.
To be honest, comparing the Electropen 4 with the S Pen and the Apple Pencil is highly unjust, as the technology on the Electropen 4 is completely different. The Portronics pen works across all platforms and is its major plus point.
The Electropen 4 is ready to work with any computing device. It looks and feels like a normal pen, something which the other two can’t do (they are basically stylus for a bigger display).
Is the Electropen 4 worth your money? Well, there are a few notable drawbacks, device compatibility being the biggest of them. Then there’s the precision of the pen, which doesn’t translate the accuracy of your hand to the digital screen. Also, the brand does not offer a choice of compatible software for all platforms, i.e. you have to do a lot of research for getting the perfect app before getting started. And, at Rs 5,999, it may seem a bit expensive as an additional accessory to your computer or tablet. However, if you are serious about artwork or prefer jotting down notes to be later accessible as a digital version and /or instant sharing, then the Electropen 4 is a good choice. However, Portronics needs to make sure to have multiple apps available for the same. For example, writing apps, drawing apps, photo editing apps and more, would have added more value to the device.
