iPad Note Taking: Notability Now Has a Pencil!!
It’s buttery smooth, but is it better than Noteshelf’s version?
Trying to compare the experience of writing by hand on an iPad to that of writing with a real pen on real paper, as about as helpful as attempting to compare carob with chocolate, or soy curls with beef. One is often labelled as a poor substitute for the latter, which I think is both unfair and unhelpful. Each has a significantly different taste and nutritional profile, and should be evaluated on its own merits.
And so it is that when I’m evaluating an iPad notes app, it’s the feel of the tools and the lines that they allow me to produce that I focus on, not whether or not they feel more or less like the “real thing”.
I’ve been a fan of Noteshelf’s pencil tool for a couple of years now. It’s smooth, pleasantly grainy, and gives helps my writing flow onto the page — respectably neatly — at a hundred miles an hour. I think it’s the way the line changes with the speed at which its drawn that makes the writing experience so pleasant.
None of the other big name notes apps have had a pencil up till now, so I was very curious to see how Notability’s would perform.
Here’s my quick comparison of the two pencil tools.
Notability
✅ Pressure sensitivity
✅ Tilt shading
❌ Not as nice to write with as Noteshelf’s in my opinion. I think it has to do with how smooth and even it is; the blobs on the end of Noteshelf’s pencil actually enhance the experience for me.
❌ Sometimes the tilt shading activated when I was writing, which was annoying. I don’t like having to keep my pencil upright to avoid this.
Noteshelf
✅ The faster you form the strokes, the more spaced out the pencil line appears. It’s a perfect match for the way I write.
Conclusion
There is no objective winner, of course. You’ll have to try them both to see which suits you best. I eat carob, you may prefer chocolate.
I still prefer Noteshelf’s pencil, because I use it for high speed handwriting rather than as a drawing tool. Notability’s pencil is a very close second, and I’m sure I’d get used to it if I had to. Fingers crossed GoodNotes and Noteful will follow the example of Noteshelf and Notability, and create their own pencil tools!