4 Office Gadgets That Can Replace Your Notepad

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Even in the digital age, an old-fashioned paper notebook remains one of the best productivity tools. There are certainly powerful productivity apps for Windows, but it’s generally faster to use pen and paper. Need to remind your future self of a creative idea or rule to follow? Tear off a post-it and place it where you will always see it. Paper notes will never go out of style, but what if you want something a little more stylish and modern? Look no further, because there are plenty of handy office gadgets that are just as good as your trusty notepad.

Some notepad alternatives can be just as convenient, if not more so. One pairs well with your phone, allowing you to carry your notes with you to pull them out when you need them. There are also those that are just as analog as notepads, but produce less waste. We managed to find just four options that do everything a paper notebook can do and more. Use them with other home office productivity gadgets to get the most out of every workday.

This glass whiteboard with wireless charging station from TSJ Office is a multifunctional productivity hub for your office. The main surface of this station is a glass dry erase board that works well for jotting down reminders, to-do lists, and more. The kit comes with four dry erase markers and an eraser. There is a slot to hold a tablet, and flipping up the glass top reveals storage space for a wide range of office supplies.

To top it all off, this version of the TSJ Office card also has a built-in wireless smartphone charger. You can power the station via the included USB-C cable, then simply place your smartphone on the station’s charger to keep it charged throughout the workday. Priced at just $35.99, this glass whiteboard with wireless charging station may make you wonder if an Anker charging station is worth it for your desk setup. You can keep your devices charged for a fraction of the cost while maximizing the desk space your paper notebook previously took up.

The Remarkable Paper Pro is a premium “paper tablet” that feels just like writing on real paper. It’s designed for digital note-taking, drawing, project planning, and document organization without the distractions that most other tablets impose on you. Reviewers praised the Remarkable Paper Pro for its screen quality, color clarity, and satisfying writing experience. This is the type of gadget that can completely replace a traditional notebook or planner.

With a hefty price tag of $799, the Paper Pro is certainly a premium productivity tablet for a premium workspace. But if you want to upgrade to a more reasonably priced digital notebook, there are budget-friendly options as well. We compared the Remarkable Paper Pure to the Remarkable 2, the latter of which is now discontinued, and found that the Remarkable Paper Pure has impressive specs for an entry-level tablet priced at $399. Depending on the nature of your work, this type of laptop-style tablet can pay for itself simply by reducing your annual paper waste.

The Kobo Libra Color is an e-reader that Amazon users swear by, but it has plenty of productivity features that also give it the ability to double as a digital notebook. When viewing an eBook or document on Libra Color, you can highlight, annotate, or annotate the text on the screen to serve as an important reminder or project guide. Libra Color is also compatible with Kobo’s built-in notebook and pen features, giving you access to digital journals, planner templates, and other note-taking tools.

Reviewers have drawn attention to the Libra Color’s long battery life and convenient form factor. It’s easy to hold in one hand for long reading sessions or for taking notes on the go. It also has an IPX8 waterproof rating, so you don’t have to worry about damage from spills even if you leave it unprotected on your desk. Reasonably priced at $259.99, it’s an accessible gadget to add to your workstation, but its dual-use nature makes it just as easy to take home for quiet reading.

The Rocketbook Core Reusable Smart Notebook isn’t exactly a notebook replacement; it’s simply a more technological notebook, designed for modern efficiency. This is a notebook that only has 32 pages, but they are made of a “premium reusable paper” material that works the same as a dry erase whiteboard. Specially designed pages facilitate fast, accurate scanning through the free Rocketbook app. Once your pages are scanned, you can organize them and share them with the cloud storage service of your choice. Then, erase the pages with the included microfiber cleaning cloth to keep writing in the same notebook forever.

The Rocketbook Core feels like using one of those essential productivity apps, except it’s a physical object you can hold in your hand. This is due to the “smart tag” functionality built into every page of the notebook. Each page has seven smart tags along the bottom margin that correspond to customizable folders in the Rocketbook app, and you can draw a circle around a tag to immediately designate where the scanned page will go after you scan it. This ability to digitally manage your documents makes the Rocketbook comparable to a full-fledged portable tablet in many ways, but at a great price of just $26.99 for the Core model.

To put together our list of office gadgets that can replace your notebook, we found four of the best-reviewed tech products that look perfectly natural on any desktop as a productivity tool. Each product on this list should resemble a modern “gadget,” either by having at least one electronic component or by integrating with a digital application as part of its primary function. They should also be able to replace a traditional paper notepad by facilitating quick note-taking on the fly with few or no extraneous features that might distract from creativity or productivity.

Every gadget on our list holds at least a 4-star customer rating on Amazon at the time of writing. We checked the best user reviews to make sure there were no commonly reported defects that might affect your experience if you purchase one of these products.