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The Rocketbook Wave isn’t the fanciest or most advanced smart notebook compared with competitors like the Moleskine Smart Writing Set or the Wacom Bamboo Slate. But at $27 it’s highly affordable, simple, and completely reusable by microwaving it for a minute or two with a glass of water (yes, you read that right). You essentially have to scan your written notes with your phone, and there are no frills or advanced options in terms of editing, but it makes it easy to upload your analog notes to a variety of apps and cloud services. The Moleskine remains our Editors’ Choice for its more advanced functionality and smart pen, but if you’re looking for something simple and inexpensive, the Wave is hard to beat.
Design and Setup
The Rocketboot Wave is a fairly standard-looking spiral notebook with some subtle differences to make it microwaveable. For one, it has a white polypropylene binding instead of metal. On its green front and back cover it also has a series of blue circles to indicate where the glass of water should be placed when microwaving. There’s a logo on both sides that fades in the microwave to help you determine when the notebook has been erased (more on this in the next section).
The notebook is available in two sizes: Standard and Executive. Standard measures 8.5 by 9.5 inches (HW), and Executive is slightly smaller at 6.0 by 8.9 inches. Both versions have 80 pages and come with a Pilot FriXion pen, which is the only pen you can use if you want to be able to erase your notes. Using a regular ink pen will make your writing permanent. I reviewed the Standard version.
Each sheet in the notebook is fine grain paper with a dot grid. In the bottom corner you’ll find a QR code to help keep track of the pages, along with icons from the app in a horizontal row next to it. The sheet itself is surrounded by a black border and feels a bit thicker and higher-quality than standard ruled notebook paper.
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Setup is simple. Start by downloading the free Rocketbook app from the Apple App Store or Google Play; I tested it with an iPhone 6s Plus. There are three panels in the app. Scan launches your camera app and takes a cropped and enhanced image of the page. History shows all your scans. And Destinations lets you set what apps you can connect with. These include Box, Dropbox, Email, Evernote, Google Drive, and iCloud. Slack compatibility is planned in the near future. Notes sent to these apps appear as PNG or PDF files. You have the option of sending each page individually or in bulk, and setting them to automatically send when scanned.
Additional settings include Enhancement Types, which let you determine what aspect of the page the Rocketbook app improves. Photo Enhancements is for images, Text Enhancements makes handwritten notes clearer, Grayscale LFC Enhancements and Color LFC Enhancements both make alterations to color reproduction and contrast. You can also turn off enhancements entirely. I didn’t notice significant distinctions between the different settings or when it was turned off. Enhancement Level is a slider from zero to 100 percent, letting you set how clear the page’s background should be. At zero percent the dot matrix appears and at 100 percent it fades for a pure white sheet. I found a higher percentage to be better for drawings and a lower one more ideal for notes.
There are no further options to edit text, add color, or change pen thickness. There’s also no handwriting recognition, automatic writing detection, or anything else you typically get with a more advanced smart notebook. All the app is really doing is taking a picture of the page and cropping out everything beyond it.
Erasing and Scanning
The main selling point here is reusability. The Pilot FriXion’s ink contains a temperature-sensitive compound that activates when it reaches 140 degrees Fahrenheit. At that temperature, the dye changes color to clear. So technically it doesn’t actually erase, but it’s no longer visible and you can write over it.
After filling up several pages in the front, several in the back, and two in the middle, I decided to clear out the notebook. According to the instructions, the microwave you use must have a glass turntable. I used the microwave in our break room, much to the amusement of everyone who expected me to be warming up lunch.
I put the notebook into the microwave with the front facing up, filled up a glass mug three quarters of the way with water, and placed it inside the blue circles in the center of the book. I microwaved the notebook for one minute, until the blue rocket logo inside the white circle disappeared. I then flipped it over and repeated the process.
After giving the notebook a few minutes to cool, I took it out of the microwave, finding it still a bit warm to the touch. Flipping it open revealed that my notes had been erased, leaving nothing but mostly clean white sheets. There were still some faint marks on a few pages, but putting it in the microwave for an extra minute removed them. Rocketbook does warn that the number of reuses will depend on several factors including note density, pen type, pen pressure, and lighting. You can typically expect about five reuses, so if you want the longest lifespan, it’s best to only microwave the notebook once you’ve used up all the pages.
To save your notes before clearing the pages, you need to launch the app. It defaults to the scanner panel, giving it access to your camera and turning on your phone’s flashlight for better visibility (you can turn it off if you want). You need to make sure the entire page is in focus using a set of dots that align with the four corners of the page. The page will flash as a green square when aligned correctly, at which point it will scan. The image appears as a preview, letting you delete it, or save and approve it. At the bottom you can hit one of the buttons to export it to a linked cloud service or app. Alternatively, you can go to the History panel and share it from there.
I found the scanning procedure to be fairly reliable. The QR code on each page helps the phone scan and keep track of pages. However, I had trouble scanning one page with a drawing that consisted of numerous thick lines. The phone just couldn’t align with it, though it handled more standard writing without issue.
The outcome of the cropped and enhanced results is fully legible, though not entirely crisp. You’ll get a much nicer look with a Moleskine or Wacom notebook, which also let you edit the text and add color.
Conclusions
For $27, the Rocketbook Wave is an affordable, simple smart notebook. It’s far less expensive than its rivals, while still providing the key functionality of getting your analog notes in digital form in a relatively quick and easy manner—the fact that it’s completely reusable is a welcome bonus. That said, the Wave only has a fraction of the features of its more expensive rivals. The Wacom Bamboo Slate costs $100 more, but gets you access to far more editing tools and useful features like handwriting recognition. The Editors’ Choice Moleskine Smart Writing Set offers a more premium experience all around, including a smart pen with its own storage, though at a much higher cost. If you don’t need all the fancy editing features and just want a simple way to move your handwritten notes to the digital world, the Rocket Book Wave is a unique, affordable choice.
4.0
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The Rocketbook Wave is an affordable, simple notebook that gives you a straightforward way of getting your handwritten notes into the digital world—and lets you reuse its pages after a quick zap in the microwave.
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