Taking notes is so immensely useful, we're prolific note takers here at shopper central, like some other people. A lot of the time it involves a trusty Uniball Vision Elite and a Rhodia notepad. Certainly not the most inexpensive options. While we do enjoy Rhodia pads, specifically the dotted ones, more cost-effective options are available. The pens we're a lot less excited to compromise on. The gel roller ball micro-point is a pleasure to write with, it lets you experience the subtlety of your writing surface and write with extreme precision and control. Right, let's move on to the topic at hand before we change our mind.

One of the more obvious choices for digital note-taking is an iPad. Well, we have a bunch of Apple stuff in our lives and certainly iPads. With the latest generation of the "cheap" iPad Apple Pencil support was added. This is a no-brainer and it give you access not just to the fairly competent Notes app that comes with iOS, but also a host of award winning drawing, drafting and notes application available in the App Store.

If you're looking for a mix of digital and analog, LiveScribe has been working on, and perfecting, a pen souped up with electronics that together with special paper allow automated notes transaction that works for charts and diagrams, drawings and even text. The associated app that you can run on your phone or table can transcribe the hand-written text into digital text. Pretty amazing, but yes, they do require special notebooks which are also quite pricey.

Somewhere between the iPad and the Livescribe option are E-Ink pads that support stylus input. We have a selection for you below. The Sony tablet is very neat and is a writing-first device, it's also the oldest device here and it shows. Remarkable and Note2 are faster and have more features. By now the most exciting selling point of the Sony pad is probably the screen texture. Between the rest, Note2 is a lot closer to a tablet than a writing-only device. Of the bunch we're excited to get our hands on the latest iteration of the Remarkable Pad which is in the pre-order phase right now.

Back to the pens for a minute. Black is the only color worth writing in, but if you insist on blue check out the BLX series from Uniball. These pens blend colors into the blank ink that adds a unique hue to your screed.