Livescribe inq Explained: What It Is, What It Costs and Who Should Switch

inq (written in lowercase) is a smart pen line from Anoto Group, the Swedish company that owns Livescribe. It opened for US pre-orders in April 2025. You write with real ink in an inq dot-paper notebook, the pen sends your strokes over Bluetooth to the free inq app on your phone, and the app turns handwriting into text and records audio through the phone. At our October 1, 2026 check, the inq writing set (pen plus one notebook) listed at $165 on inq.shop, with a 100-day trial.

LivePen owners can switch easily, since their notebooks work with the inq app and Livescribe offers a free data migration. For Echo 2, Livescribe 3 and Symphony owners the path is less clear. We make Ophaya smart pens, a competing product, so weigh our comparison with that in mind. We say where inq is the better buy.

What inq is and how it relates to Livescribe

Anoto announced inq on April 29, 2025 as "a completely re-imagined lineup of smartpens, notebooks, accessories and software under a bold new consumer brand." The same release lists "inq" and "Livescribe" as separate retail product lines. So inq is the parent company's newer brand, with its own pens, notebooks, app and store.

In August 2026 the parent company registered a new name, INQ Group AB. Livescribe's US homepage now says "Discover inq," and the two smartpens in its store, the LivePen A5 bundle and the Echo 2, were both sold out at our check. Livescribe says the LivePen app will keep working with bug fixes and support, but it said new features would stop no later than August 31, 2025. Our Livescribe status check covers the company side.

The inq lineup and prices in October 2026

List prices on inq.shop at our October 1, 2026 check:

• The writing set costs $165: the pen in Moon White or Velvet Black, one spiral notebook in A5 or US Letter size, and the app.
• An extra pen costs $150.
• Spiral notebooks cost $9 for A5 (156 pages) or $10 for Letter (190 pages).
• A five-pack of standard D1 ink refills costs $10.

Writing sets ship free to the continental US, and inq's FAQ says it can't take orders from outside the United States at this time. The refund policy allows "a full 100 days from the delivery date" with a prepaid return label, and a returned set must include the pen and notebook. Pens bought from inq's store carry a one-year limited warranty.

What the inq app does

inq's user guide calls the app "free to install and use." It runs on iOS and Android, and a web app at inq.live shows your notes on a laptop. The pen can't connect to the web app, though. Notes reach it only after the phone app syncs them to the cloud, so a phone stays part of the setup.

Transcription gets the most attention. The guide says regular writing comes out as formatted text, math as LaTeX, data tables as CSV for Excel or Google Sheets, and diagrams as Mermaid code. You can edit a transcript, but requesting a fresh one wipes your edits. A chemistry student writing equations will get more from this than someone jotting a grocery list.

Audio is recorded by your phone in the app while you write. Tapping your handwriting later jumps playback to five seconds before you wrote it, and "Replay handwriting" redraws the page in time with the sound. The app can also transcribe a recording and tries to separate speakers, which helps after a three-person client call.

Quin, inq's AI assistant, answers questions about a page, helps with math problems or suggests ideas. inq's app page says "usage limits may apply," and we didn't find the limits spelled out. You can share a web link to a page or whole notebook that keeps updating as you write, and export notebooks as PDF and pages as PNG.

Offline memory and dot paper

inq's product page says the pen "holds up to 75 pages of handwritten notes before you need to sync." The user guide adds that, for now, after around 50 letter-size pages you'll need to run "Free Memory" in the app. If you write daily, plan to open the app every few days.

inq notebooks use Anoto's dot pattern, which inq's FAQ describes as "nearly invisible microdots" that tell the pen the page and position. Notebooks with the same size, binding, cover color and volume number carry identical patterns, so the pen can't tell two copies apart. To reuse a volume you archive the finished one in the app, and archiving can't be undone.

What about Livescribe dot paper? Livescribe's inq FAQ for LivePen customers says the inq app "is also compatible with all the same notebooks that work with LivePen," and adds: "Older Livescribe notebooks that are not compatible with LivePen are also not compatible with inq." It doesn't name those older notebooks, so test a page before trusting an old stack. Ophaya is a separate system: our pen captures writing only on Ophaya dot-code paper or the Ophaya LCD tablet, so it won't capture Livescribe or inq notebooks. See our Livescribe paper guide for formats.

Switching from LivePen, Echo 2, Livescribe 3 or Symphony

LivePen owners

Livescribe's FAQ says LivePen hardware "works great with the new inq app" and can write in inq notebooks once you use that app. To move your history, update the LivePen app to version 1.15.1 or later, tap the Person icon, then Start Migration. Livescribe says "all of your handwriting, transcripts, voice recordings, and voice transcripts" move over, and each LivePen account can migrate to exactly one inq account. It only runs one way: the inq pen works only with the inq app.

Echo 2, Livescribe 3 and Symphony owners

The inq FAQ and migration page cover LivePen only. We found no official statement that an Echo 2, Livescribe 3 or Symphony pen connects to the inq app, or that Livescribe+ notes can move to inq. Ask inq support before ordering, and export your Livescribe+ notes and recordings either way. Our Livescribe 3, Symphony and Aegir guide covers exporting.

Echo 2 owners should also think about audio. Livescribe says the Echo 2 "has a built-in microphone and stores around 200 hours of audio" in the pen. inq records on the phone, as Ophaya does, which is fine at a meeting table and harder from the back of a 300-seat lecture hall. Our Echo 2 alternatives guide goes through that trade-off.

inq vs Ophaya

Our pen reads a printed dot pattern with an infrared camera and syncs live over Bluetooth to the free Ophaya Pro+ app. The app records audio on your phone or tablet and links it to what you wrote. OCR converts handwriting to editable text, which you should check before sharing. The app's AI assistant can summarize and translate your notes, and the October 2026 iPhone and iPad update added transcription of recordings (our guide to AI pens compares inq, Ophaya and the AI recording pens). Prices are list prices at our October 1, 2026 check.

inq is the better pick if you already own LivePen notebooks or years of LivePen notes, since the migration keeps them in one app. It also suits you if you want notes in a browser on a work computer, transcripts of math and tables, or audio transcripts with speakers separated. The 100-day trial covers most of a semester. And Anoto calls itself "the original inventor of the digital pen and dot pattern technology," with the Livescribe name behind it.

We think Ophaya fits better if you want to spend less, would use an LCD tablet for scratch work, or go days without syncing. On the tablet, strokes stream to the app as you write; tap to save the page before you erase. Our Ophaya vs Livescribe comparison covers the Livescribe side in more detail.

Frequently asked questions

Is inq the same as Livescribe?

No, but they share a parent. Anoto Group (now INQ Group AB) runs both brands, and inq has its own pens, notebooks, app and store. A LivePen works with the inq app, while the inq pen works only with the inq app.

Does inq work with Livescribe paper?

Partly. Livescribe's FAQ says the inq app works with all notebooks that work with LivePen. Older Livescribe notebooks that don't work with LivePen won't work with inq either.

Does the inq pen record audio?

Your phone records it in the inq app. inq's app page puts it this way: "Use your phone to record audio. Tap your notes to play back relevant portions."

Can I use inq on a computer?

You can view, search and download synced notes at inq.live in a browser. The pen itself pairs only with the iOS or Android app.