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Best Note-Taking App to use with a stylus

rgr555 said:
Notability for sure. 99 cents is a joke.

Covers everything you will ever need except Retina support (hopefully soon)
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I used to love it until the iPad 3. Now it's laggy and crappy looking thanks to no retina update. Come on I mean it's April 11th and the iPad 3 came out March 16th. It better be a helluva update and sort all the issues out. The interface is terrible too compared to others. It needs a book style interface with preview pages like upad.

Upad has the nicest writing I've seen, retina works but it's very slow.

Goodnotes free is not bad either.

So far the iPad 3 is not compelling for note taking unfortunately.

iPad 1 with notability was excellent.
 
Notability.....

tdream said:
I used to love it until the iPad 3. Now it's laggy and crappy looking thanks to no retina update.
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The lag seem to be acknowledged as a bug and they (certainly taking their time) working on it.

For the retina display, the effect is very clearly visible when you write with your nose tip. Using finger or stylus it's OK.

Notability not likes:

I can't move or erase with eraser typed text. Typed text only starts left.

BTW, I would trade the retina anytime for longer battery life or less weight.
 
Noteshelf is a winner!

I use Noteshelf and Amazon basics stylus (~ $10) = pretty decent tools
 
From the ones I have tried, I find goodnotes to be the best for one reason...the zoomed writing mood is superior to others. Instead of writing until you reach the end of the screen and then moving forward, you can write about half of the screen and then jump forward by moving back to the beginning of the writing entry area. This eliminates having to move your hand off of the iPad to continue writing, or really a having to move your hand at all. It's hard to explain but just try the free one and you'll see what I mean. Their rendering has gotten much faster, though it is still a very small amount slower than some of the others if you are writing quickly.... Not as many features as ones like notability, but it's free, and the way the zoom box works is excellent.
 
mikee336 said:
No one else liking noteability? Wish these apps all had free trials as noteability is the only I've downloaded and liked. Any particular reason others are choosing the other apps over this one?
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I greatly prefer Notability for hand writing, and I've tried a good number of apps. It's definitely top of the list for me. 7NotesHD is a strong second.
 
jojoba said:
I greatly prefer Notability for hand writing, and I've tried a good number of apps. It's definitely top of the list for me. 7NotesHD is a strong second.
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Since posting I decided to waste money and try quiete a few apps. I found that Goodnites/PDF Expert/PDF printer combo handles all my needs. Even thinking about downloading the Pages/Keynote/numbers combo and going iPad only. Never knew how powerful this thing could be. So glad I finally gave in and got an iPad! :)
 
mikee336 said:
Since posting I decided to waste money and try quiete a few apps. I found that Goodnites/PDF Expert/PDF printer combo handles all my needs. Even thinking about downloading the Pages/Keynote/numbers combo and going iPad only. Never knew how powerful this thing could be. So glad I finally gave in and got an iPad! :)
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Yes, it's a brilliant tool. I have used it to go paperless in my office, and generally use it extensively for my academic work. Enjoy :)
 
Notability got an update today with revamped interface and full retina support. Pretty legit
 
Silly question but how does retina help on the iPad here given that the touch screen and stylus don't feel that accurate? Or am I missing something here.
 
Any tips on learning how to write legibly with a stylus? My writing is bad enough as it is these days! :(
 
diane143 said:
Any tips on learning how to write legibly with a stylus? My writing is bad enough as it is these days! :(
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IME, you need an app which provides the 'zoom box magnifier' (not sure what the proper name is) with wrist support. Notability and 7Notes HD have it. It's the only way hand writing works for me, but with that box it works really well.
 
jojoba said:
IME, you need an app which provides the 'zoom box magnifier' (not sure what the proper name is) with wrist support. Notability and 7Notes HD have it. It's the only way hand writing works for me, but with that box it works really well.
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I downloaded GoodNotes, UPAD and Notability and tried them all quickly. My writing looks best in Notabiity so there is something in the programs that definitely affects this! I don't have the best stylus either. Thanks for the tip :)
 
diane143 said:
I downloaded GoodNotes, UPAD and Notability and tried them all quickly. My writing looks best in Notabiity so there is something in the programs that definitely affects this! I don't have the best stylus either. Thanks for the tip :)
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Glad you found something that works for you :)
 
Its been ages since I left my Notability collecting dust in my ipad.
Have not been using it because the handwriting is really bad.

I thought it was the stylus or my handwriting, but after looking at this review, http://www.imore.com/noteshelf-remarks-notability-ipad-handwriting-app-shootout I hope to try out Noteshelf soon.

Just wanted to let you guys know app matters.

Anyone knows which has the least ink lag and best rendering? All those additional features, PDF annotations and stuff all becomes useless when whatever you write doesn't make you want to look at it again, or hardly readable.
 
I have used noteshelf for over a year or so and its been great especially after the retina update. The ink engine is fast and smooth. The organisation of notebooks with customization covers is nice.

However I recently went back to explore other notepad apps to see what had changed since I reviewed them from way back.

I can now say that Goodnotes has improved a lot. It used to feel very laggy but they have improved things there and now the engine is very similar to noteshelf.

One thing that has now swayed me to Goodnotes is the 'page'. Noteshelf feels to me now to be a small sized notebook in that I have only 24 lines to write on. Goodnotes has way more lines and looks like an A4 page. I have always written physical notes on A4 size pages so Goodnotes offers an exact replica of this. With Noteshelf it always felt like I had limited space to write notes and made it feel like an A5 paper in terms of a physical counterpart.

I like the pages overview in Goodnotes, the one in Noteshelf just doesn't feel right with my brain- and I feel some lag in my brain as it tries to get a quick overview. I think this maybe because Noteshelf displays it all in one column, from top to bottom which requires scrolling down. Goodnotes does it over three columns, left to right, very much like laying out a book. My brain gets this straightaway.

The other thing I like about Goodnotes is the pdf backup sync. I know I can now access pdf replica's of my notes on any computer. With Noteshelf I had to sync/send one page at a time. Its such a boring task I haven't bothered to do any synching/backup.

So I am now in the process in rewriting my notes from Noteshelf and I will be removing it once I am done.

Hope this helps people. At the end of the day you need to try them out if you have the funds and see what suits you and what functions you will need. I think the inking engines have come a long way since a year ago. I'm excited to see what the future will bring -especially as new ipads come out!
 
I have 2 days using Note Taker HD and it's a great app. It's true that on Penultimate you have a better handwriting, but the amount of information you can fit on NTHD is a lot more than you can get on Penultimate. Plus, with the zoom box you can achieve a very high level of detail.
 
Does anyone know if Noteshelf has PDF annotation capability yet?

As of right now I am probably going with GoodNotes for the iPad Mini. The Lite version works great, so I will most likely get the full version.

I've heard a lot of good things about Noteshelf, but not having PDF annotation would be a deal breaker.

Just thought I'd ask around prior to committing to Goodnotes.
 
WingedWheel said:
Does anyone know if Noteshelf has PDF annotation capability yet?

As of right now I am probably going with GoodNotes for the iPad Mini. The Lite version works great, so I will most likely get the full version.

I've heard a lot of good things about Noteshelf, but not having PDF annotation would be a deal breaker.

Just thought I'd ask around prior to committing to Goodnotes.
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No PDF annotation in NoteShelf yet. The developer must have heard this wish numerous times, so I trust it to be in a future update (don't know when though).
Fortunately, I don't need PDF annotation too much - so I will definitely stick with NoteShelf. My workaround now is to convert PDF pages to images and import them in my notebooks.

IMHO GoodNotes is a great app as well, hope you'll enjoy.
 
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