Kudos to Evernote, if anything makes me want an overpriced Moleskine, it’s that beautiful debossed cover. What can I say, I’m a sucker for pretty things.

Evernote just announced these notebooks to go along with a new “Page Camera” feature in their iOS app. They claim the special dotted graph or lined paper helps the app adjust skew which will help with OCR to make your handwritten notes searchable. There’s also a feature that uses “Smart Stickers” to allow you to tag pictures automatically or even send them to specific notebooks.

I was curious how well Page Camera works so I tested the Evernote app using a regular lined pocket Moleskine. The app defaults to a normal camera that takes normal type pictures. I snapped a photo of a notebook page in low light and the picture looked like a notebook page in low light, readable but not all that great.

Page Camera mode automatically uses the flash and tweaks the contrast to clean up shadows; it even has a handy rectangle guide to help center the image. A picture of the same page taken with Page Camera resulted in a much cleaner image. As far as I could tell, Evernote’s OCR worked fine in both instances.

You can’t blame Evernote for going after this market, it’s a legitimate need on some level. I know a lot of the indie tech bloggers I read already use Evernote for this purpose and Page Camera alone should be a big help. At $24.95 & $29.95 they seem overpriced but each notebook comes with 3 months of Evernote Premium — a $15 value — which means they cost roughly the same as a regular Moleskine.

Pre-orders are taking place now at the Evernote store and Moleskine store (USA link). Evernote says they’ll start shipping on October 1st.

Judging by how many notebooks I already own and how well Evernote Page Camera works with regular notebooks, I’ll try to pass on these. I don’t think anyone needs this notebook but I wouldn’t fault you for buying one, they’re so pretty.