What has just found its way onto the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter could almost be straight out of a science fiction movie. With the Scan Reader Pen 3 Pro, manufacturer Newyes has presented a new pen that translates texts in real time and plays them back thanks to text-to-speech.
Scan Reader Pen 3 Pro already successfully funded
The campaign for the real-time AI translator Scan Reader Pen 3 Pro has only recently started on Kickstarter and is still running for 25 days. At this point, however, 332 backers have already supported the project and far exceeded the funding goal of 4,621 euros. Currently, the campaign has already raised 24,012 euros. The concept of the translator pen is also ingenious.
Weighing around 80 grams, the compact pen is equipped with a 2.98-inch touchscreen display and comes with extensive features. Yes, an MP3 player and an audio recorder are also included, but they are not the main use of the Scan Reader Pen 3 Pro, which has a camera, a microphone and speakers. This is because it has a translation function. The pen is simply moved over a text, whereupon it scans the words and translates them into 112 different languages in real time thanks to AI functions.
The speed of text recognition is said to be impressive. Around 3,000 letters per minute are to be recognized and translated immediately. The accuracy of recognition is 98 percent, according to manufacturer Newyes.
More technical details about the Scan Reader Pen 3 Pro
The Scan Reader Pen 3 Pro also has 16 GB of internal memory, so it can translate a total of four languages (English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean) offline. The other 112 languages are enabled thanks to WiFi connectivity. Thanks to Bluetooth connectivity, the pen can also be connected directly to headphones, for example, in order to play the text-to-speech translation over them.
Thanks to a 1,200 mAh battery, the Pen 3 Pro is supposed to provide a standby time of up to 8 days, as well as 2-3 hours of continuous use. Scanned content can be saved as favorites, whereupon it can be accessed later.
Different fonts and sizes, as well as materials should not present the pen with any problems. Thanks to OCR technology, scanned texts in 55 languages can also be transcribed directly and transferred to the smartphone via Bluetooth. The transcription feature is also said to work with a Windows PC.
In addition, the Scan Reader Pen 3 Pro has a built-in dictionary to help children and young people learn a language, for example, or a text-to-speech scanner to help users with vision problems, for example. Texts spoken into the microphone should also be able to be translated immediately, which should be particularly useful when traveling abroad.
Price and availability
Those who want to support the Scan Reader Pen 3 Pro on Kickstarter still have until the campaign expires on April 29, 2022 to do so. Starting at the equivalent of around 89 euros, you can get your hands on a copy of the pen, which is expected to ship in June 2022. The RRP is supposed to be 199 euros.
Alternatively, the Pen 3 (without the Pro name extension and with fewer functions) is available on the manufacturer’s homepage at a price of the equivalent of 180.11 Euros with currently 23 positive reviews, which already date back to August 2021.
