The humble notebook is evolving. Gone are the days when taking notes by hand meant you were making a choice between old-school notes and having access to those notes digitally. These days, you can take notes by hand, and still be able to access those notes on your phone or laptop.

There are plenty of reasons you might want to do so. Studies have shown that taking notes by hand helps people retain information better than typing it on a computer. But that doesn’t mean that those who want to take notes have to be stuck without a digital form of their notes – so-called smart notebooks allow users to write their notes by hand, then upload an image of those notes to the cloud, often complete with malleable text.

There are a few things to consider when buying a smart notebook. The first is exactly how you want to use it. Some smart notebooks come with a smart pen that can detect writing automatically, while others have marked pages that you have to take a picture of with your phone. But the arguably easier-to-use smart pen comes at a higher price, so if you’re on a budget, you may have to stick with taking those photos with your phone.

Some smart notebooks are reusable – meaning they come with some way to erase pages, and write on them again. That means that you don’t have to buy new smart notebooks every time you finish one. And, some notebooks have different kinds of layouts, like calendar layouts, to-do layouts, and more.