StudyX Smartpaper Letters vs Other Ways to Practice Handwriting
Hiro · Game Designer @ StudyXStudyX Smartpaper LettersComparison
People come to handwriting practice from very different places. A Montessori family wants a child to trace letters and say their sounds. A school child has this week’s kanji to learn. An adult learner of Chinese or Japanese wants characters to stop looking wobbly. Someone else simply wants neater handwriting in a language they already know. What they share is a choice between paper, a person, a physical material or an app.
This post compares StudyX Smartpaper Letters (スマもじ in Japan) with those options, and says where each one is the better pick.
What StudyX Smartpaper Letters Does
For a fair comparison, here is what the app offers:
- More than 10,000 characters: Japanese hiragana, katakana and kanji (joyo and name kanji), Chinese hanzi in Simplified and Traditional forms, Korean Hanja, the English alphabet in print and cursive, and numerals.
- An animated stroke-by-stroke guide for every character, with a slow animation setting.
- Real-time scoring that compares your writing with the model character. You can hide the score in settings if you prefer.
- Montessori-style color coding for vowels, consonants and numbers.
- Word lists you can save, and a practice history kept on the device. The app notes that the characters you enter are not sent anywhere.
- Made for iPad and Apple Pencil.
Option 1: Physical Sandpaper Letters
Montessori’s sandpaper letters are wooden or card tiles with each letter cut from sandpaper. The child traces the letter with two fingers, following the path of writing, and says its sound while tracing. In the traditional colors, consonants are pink and vowels are blue. It is a beautiful material, and the texture under the fingers is something no screen can give.
Where it differs: a set covers the alphabet, about 26 letters. There is no practical wooden set for thousands of kanji or hanzi. The boards also do not show stroke order in motion or say whether a tracing was accurate; that is the adult’s role in a Montessori setting. Smartpaper Letters takes the same idea of tracing by hand and extends it to the scripts a wooden set cannot hold. It is meant to sit next to physical materials, not to replace them.
Option 2: Paper Copybooks and Penmanship Workbooks
Penmanship workbooks, the ペン字練習帳 found in every Japanese bookshop, and copybooks for cursive, are the traditional route to better handwriting. They have a real advantage: you write with the pen you will actually use, on the paper you will actually use, and the feel of pen on paper is the thing you are trying to improve.
What paper cannot do is watch you. A workbook shows the model and leaves the comparison to your eye, which is exactly the part beginners find hardest. It also cannot animate stroke order. I think the two combine well: learn the order and proportions with feedback on screen, then transfer them to paper.
Option 3: A Class or a Teacher
A calligraphy or penmanship teacher sees what no app sees: posture, grip, the angle of the pen, the rhythm of a stroke. For shodo with a brush, or for anyone aiming at genuinely fine handwriting, a teacher is the better choice, and I would not suggest an app as a substitute.
The trade-off is time and access. Lessons happen once a week at best. An app is there for five minutes on any evening, which is where most of the repetition happens.
Option 4: Other Handwriting Apps
There are other apps that grade handwriting. One well-known example is Skritter, which focuses on Chinese and Japanese characters with handwriting recognition and stroke-level feedback, and runs on iOS, Android and the web. As of September 2026 its site lists subscription plans (for example $14.99 a month or $99.99 a year) with a 7-day free trial, and it requires an account. Its site describes lists built from textbooks or made by users, and reviewing hard characters more often. If you are studying Chinese or Japanese seriously and want that kind of study system, it is worth a look.
Smartpaper Letters takes a different approach. It is a tracing tool rather than a course: you pick characters, or type the ones you want, and practice them. It also reaches beyond Chinese and Japanese to Korean Hanja, the Latin alphabet in print and cursive, and numerals, which makes it usable by a young child and an adult in the same household.
Two of our own apps overlap with it. StudyX Japanese Letters Tracer covers only kana and works on iPhone as well as iPad. KanjiN is a kanji drill app with handwriting recognition, organized by school grade, Kanken level and JLPT level. If your goal is exactly one of those, the narrower app may suit you better.
Side by Side
| Smartpaper Letters | Sandpaper letters | Paper workbooks | Teacher | Skritter | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Characters | 10,000+ in several scripts | About 26 letters | Depends on the book | Depends on the teacher | Chinese and Japanese |
| Animated stroke order | Yes | No | No | By demonstration | Yes |
| Feedback on your writing | Real-time score | From an adult | None | Yes, the best | Real-time grading |
| Real pen on paper | No | Fingers on texture | Yes | Yes | No |
| Account required | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Cost | See the App Store | Price of the set | Price of the book | Lesson fees | Subscription (as of September 2026) |
| Devices | iPad with Apple Pencil | None | None | None | iOS, Android, web |
When Another Option Is the Better Choice
- If you do not have an iPad and Apple Pencil, this is not the app for you. It is designed around that pairing.
- If you want the feel of pen on paper, a workbook is irreplaceable. I think the best results come from using both.
- If you want a structured course in Chinese or Japanese with lists and review built in, a study app such as Skritter, or a class, is closer to that.
- If you practice brush calligraphy, find a teacher.
- If your child is in a Montessori classroom, the physical sandpaper letters come first. The app is a way to extend the same activity to more characters at home.
Where the App Fits
Smartpaper Letters is useful when you want to trace almost any character you need, see its stroke order, and get immediate feedback without someone standing beside you. That covers a surprisingly wide range of people, from a preschooler meeting first letters to an adult working on penmanship.
For a first session, see Getting Started with StudyX Smartpaper Letters. For routines, see Tips for Practicing with StudyX Smartpaper Letters, and for the learners it suits, Who Is StudyX Smartpaper Letters For?. The app is described on the StudyX Smartpaper Letters page.
