Editing The Pen Addict 481/transcript (section)

== Lamy Zivo Pen ==


'''''Brad:'''   I don't understand. It's just one of those Lamy things that I giggle at. I was like, are you, I like, this is like every Lamy pen ever, which is great. Like I'm in, like I'm in on the Lamy design style. This is not by no means unprecedented in Lamy's, in Lamy's pen lineup. So I find, I find that funny. Technical perfection. Yeah. The kicker here, Myke, why I actually love this product the most. If you scroll down all the way towards the bottom, I don't know if you notice this. Eight euros. Whoa. This is an entry level pen. That's entry, entry level. For Lamy, yeah, they rarely have anything under 10. So this is like a 10 US dollar pen. That's less expensive than the Tipo ballpoint, which I love. This is, this has a chance to do very, very well. Like I will be anxious to get one of these. Right now it only comes in black and gray. Again, unprecedented colors from Lamy, Myke. Unprecedented. Unprecedented that this just comes in black and gray with silver clip.

''''Myke:'''  Well, it's 262 black and 262 light gray in one word. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. It's the unprecedented nature of it.

'''''Brad:'''   I'm all in. I'm all in on the Zivo. I will be getting one of these. I'll probably be getting multiple of these because these would be a great pen to give away. Great pen to give to other people. And I think it's just cool. And if it does well, and this will relate to a future topic that we're going to talk about after this Lamy bit, that I could see some options with this pen. Right. This could be a platform type of product like the Tipo or like the Pico or like the Safari or some of these other pens. I think it's fantastic. Like everything about it looks great, especially the price. If they said the price was like 30 euros, I probably wouldn't have blinked either. You know, 25 euros, whatever. So it seems good. I think they're on the right track here. Next up, Myke, is where they lose the plot for me. And this is where I don't handle what Lamy is doing very well. And this is a product called the Lamy Ideos. Right. I-D-E-O-S.

'''''Brad:'''   I saw a link for this pen. This is like, it's like in the pre-order stage. It's coming next month. I saw this link. And I kind of lost my mind because it takes everything that already exists in the Lamy Studio, the Lamy Ion, the Lamy Scala, and like kind of jams it into one pen. And I hate it. Because they already do it. And they arguably do it better in other products that they already have. This is basically like I'm calling it the Studio Plus. So it's an aluminum barrel, smooth grip, fountain pen with a cap that posts on the end of the barrel instead of sleeves down on the barrel like on the studio. And it just makes absolutely no sense in their product lineup whatsoever. However, it is, I'm not going to say it's like a terrible design, right? Like the design is fine, but it exists. Like this is not a new product that they're trying to pass it off as. You know, like the main feature is the teardrop shape on the cap, Myke. Like that's what they're selling you here. They're selling you a Lamy Studio with a different cap and like the Lamy Aon shaped nib with the rounded shoulders on the nib and the Lamy Scala with the posting of the cap. And I dislike it. Not from a techno perspective, but from like an idea perspective. The IDOs is a bad idea. And I, what are they?

'''''Brad:'''   I'm more particular about this than a lot of people.

''''Myke:'''  The IDOs doesn't feel new to me. I feel like I've seen this. That's the point. Yeah. That's my point. Okay. It is, but it feels like, yeah, I just figured I'd seen this. You know what it is? Yeah. It's like this.

'''''Brad:'''   You actually completely got it without you realizing that you got it.

''''Myke:'''  I thought, because what I was going to say is, oh, haven't we spoken about this already? But no, this is the point. So it's kind of, yes. And it looks like the CP1 quite a bit. Sure. And also the logo and also the ION and also the 2000.

'''''Brad:'''   Yeah.

''''Myke:'''  And the studio. But like not in a good way.

'''''Brad:'''   You got it, Myke. All right. Cool. You really, really, like legitimately, that's what this is. You have, this is a new pin from Lamy. But you've seen it all before.

''''Myke:'''  It looks like it's got a bit of a different design element. It's like, seems like triangular shaped, maybe?

'''''Brad:'''   The cap, the teardrop is the shape. So. Right. Distinctive interpretation of Lamy's design principles brings the basic forms of the triangle and circle together to create a surprising yet natural teardrop shape that offers a unique haptic writing experience. So the whole thing is around this teardrop shape, which that's just like, man, don't try so hard.

''''Myke:'''  Okay. I get it. Teardrop, not triangle.

'''''Brad:'''   Cool. Yeah. Yeah. Teardrop. So.

'''''Brad:'''   That's a challenging product, Myke. That's a challenging product. Yeah. It's basically just a mashup of a bunch of their other products and teardropified, I guess.

''''Myke:'''  Don't know how I feel about that one. That's a thing.

'''''Brad:'''   It's like, if you like this, but want a normal pen, buy the Lamy Studio. The Lamy Studio is one of the most underrated pens on the market. I will stand by that.

'''''Brad:'''   It's just a great pen.

''''Myke:'''  I expect most of Lamy's stuff is underrated because the Safari and Ale Star are so good. Yeah. So people don't really pay attention to everything else that they do.

'''''Brad:'''   Yeah. This is just like this weird fountain pen mutation is what this is. It's the Lamy mutation. That's what I feel like this pen is. All right. Last one in this Lamy section, Myke. This one caught me actually more off guard than the Zivo entry-level ballpoint and the weird Ideos is, and this shouldn't have caught me off guard, but the problem is like it just, you know, what if you launch a product and no one knows about it? The Lamy X Neo Lab. So this is the Lamy encode digital slash analog writing experience.

''''Myke:'''  Didn't we decide that that meant buy?

'''''Brad:'''   Which? Oh, yeah. Lamy buy. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. I just like saying that. But yes, it doesn't really translate when I say it out loud.

''''Myke:'''  People don't say buy anymore, but that is what that means, I think.

'''''Brad:'''   Yeah. Yep. Or it's like a collaboration. So anyway, this is Lamy's digital pen offering. I swear they've done this before. They've done like the Wacom styluses.

''''Myke:'''  Yeah, no, that's a totally different thing. Yeah, that's a different thing. So they sell the styluses. I don't think they've ever done a product like this before. Yeah. I don't think they've done this. This is purely Moleskine's like bag. Like they live in this place, you know?

'''''Brad:'''   Right. Right. This is Lamy doing it because they feel like they have to do it.

''''Myke:'''  Yes. Well, they should. I actually do agree with this point. I agree. I agree. What I will say, I mean, obviously I've not used it, but from a visual perspective, this might be the best offering because-

'''''Brad:'''   I would 100% try this.

''''Myke:'''  Their pen just looks like a regular Safari. Now, most of the time, they don't, right? Like if there's a pen component, the pen-

'''''Brad:'''   It usually looks like the scribble pen.

''''Myke:'''  Yeah. It's got something going on, you know? But this pen, I mean, I can't tell from looking at it, but it looks like it holds the same dimensions as a Safari. The only difference is like the way it's shaped makes it look like a fountain pen, right? But it's actually like a- Is it gel pen?

'''''Brad:'''   No, it's a ballpoint. It's a ballpoint refill.

''''Myke:'''  Because it's got the camera hidden behind, or the sensor's hidden behind the nib.

'''''Brad:'''   It needs the space for the- Yep. So it needs the space for the sensor underneath your writing tip. So it does require the notebook, right? These things work in conjunction, right? You can't- This isn't the product where you have the pen and then you like scan it with your phone or you do something else. So-

''''Myke:'''  I believe Moleskine have gotten away from that. If my memory serves, they make a pen product that doesn't need the special paper to work, I think.

'''''Brad:'''   That's what I thought too. So this one requires- Let me read this one little technical part about the sensor. It says, The optoelectric sensor reads the encode pattern printed on the paper of the Lamy digital paper notebook and recognizes handwriting on the pages. The Neolab encode sensor reads the codes from the blank surface. The processor contained in the pen performs the complex mathematical calculation to locate the pen position on the page. So these two things have to work together to get your output digitally. So if you're looking for an exquisite pen performance, you don't buy these products, right? But if you're looking for a transcription of your handwriting into a digital form, well, then you buy into a full system, which is what this is.

'''''Brad:'''   It's interesting. It's like, I think it's $150 to get into the set. I'd have to look at it. This one actually doesn't list the price on the page.

''''Myke:'''  The issue with all of these things, though, is they have a companion app, right? So that's the whole thing. So you're writing this, and then everything you've got going on gets saved in the app. And again, it's like, how good is the app? And I remember the last time I tried it, which was a couple of years ago, the Moskine stuff was all pretty good.

''''Myke:'''  They've clearly been working on it. I like that they have this little thing in the Lamy one where you can choose the color that you want it to look like in the digital version by using this little bookmark. I think that's kind of cute, right? It's like bridging the gap. Right. I mean, I said it before. Actually, by scrolling quickly through their website, I think it might just be my dream that Moskine have an option where you don't need their paper, but I think you still need their paper for their smart pen. But their pen, again, I haven't seen it in a long time, also looks really good now. It was good, yeah. Have you seen it recently? Like, it looks just like the Moskine pen, the one that you clip on the inside of the book, the flat one. Right. It looks just like that now. I mean, and it didn't before. I do like this. So I think you still need the whole thing. For me, this stuff's never going to really land until you can actually just use whatever pen you want. But frankly, like, no company's ever going to be able to make this the way that I want it anyway. And also, going to be honest, after all this time, I don't know what the utility of this is. Because phone cameras are so good now. They just have built-in scanning functions. And now, like, if you combine this with the iOS 15 live text thing, there's no reason to use a product like this anymore. Because now you can just put your incredible phone camera over the top of the page, take a picture, and then copy and paste the text out of it. Like, at this point, I think that phones and software is moving so fast that these pen products are just becoming more and more obsolete.

'''''Brad:'''   I agree. Like, I think Lamy's come in on the wrong side of the mountain here. We're on the downslope now. We're going downhill on this. Like, there was a little peak there where, you know, you could get in and get people interested in a product like this. And then, like, the Moleskine, when they launched it, that was probably, like, kind of the peak because they did it the best. But if Moleskine can't make it work and have that stickiness that gets into people's systems, like, using a system like this is cumbersome, right? It's defined in that you have a specific thing you have to use to make it work. But it's cumbersome in actually using it to have the paper and the charger and the pen and the refill and checking the battery and making sure the uploads are good and having an app. And all of these things. And it's just, you know, a few years ago, I was hoping we could get there to where it would be a more universal product. And now I just think we're on a slow burn of the eventually going away.

''''Myke:'''  Yeah. I don't know for this world, I don't think. But I will congratulate them on making a product that looks good. It looks good. Yeah. They did it good. If they were going to ever come into this world, now was the right time. If it took them until now to get it basically all to fit inside the guts of a regular safari.