A Year of Taking University Lecture Notes on an iPad (GoodNotes vs. Notability)
I bought an iPad Air last year and tried both note-taking apps. Bottom line: I settled on GoodNotes.
I used Notability for the first three months. The writing feel is definitely better in Notability. There's less micro-jitter when using the pen tip, and handwriting recognition accuracy is higher. But the decisive factor: when annotating lecture slide PDFs, layer management is much easier in GoodNotes.
I also liked being able to organize folders by course and create my own note templates.
The downside is that iCloud sync sometimes gets stuck. If that happens even once during exam period, it really raises your blood pressure. So these days I manually back up the day before an exam.
My note-taking setup:
- Apple Pencil (2nd generation) + paper-feel screen protector (matte, clear)
- Pen fixed at fountain pen 0.4mm; only two colors, black and red
- I only use a yellow highlighter. Too many colors make things chaotic.
For those considering an iPad: if you're only going to take notes, the Air 64GB is enough. The Pro is overkill. And since you'll use one app for life once you buy it, pay for the paid app. Wasting time switching between free apps costs more.
10 answers
Sync issues are so real… if it blows up once the night before an exam, it totally wrecks you lol. Ever since then, I’ve even set up GoodNotes auto-backup.
I'm a bit skeptical about paper-texture films. When you put one on, screen clarity drops noticeably and the pen tip wears out faster—is that worth putting up with? I just use the bare screen, and once I got used to it, I found that better.
Agreed
Honestly, 64GB doesn’t seem like a good idea. Even if you’re just taking notes, PDF lecture materials pile up, and once you add recordings, it fills up fast. I’m using 128GB, and after a year I’m already over 70% full. Most people who buy an Air use it as a secondary laptop, so it’s better to go with more storage.