Tablets with stylus for hand-written note taking

[Jimexpl]

Got rid of the iPad. It got buried under a pile of paper, and I was surprised to find it a few months later "Oh, I forgot I had that".

It performed quite poorly at most tasks. Note-taking in meetings is far faster when typed on a keyboard, as opposed to an iPad. Sketching/brainstorming is more creative and freeing when it's on a piece of paper with a pen, away from any screens.

Doing lit reviews was the only task where it shone. Reading long or large volumes of PDF documents and quickly highlighting key parts with the Apple Pen is a great way to plough through a lot of research. However, I'm steering away from research projects, so hadn't needed to do that since last summer.

On the plus side, it sold on eBay for MORE than I paid for it new last year. A combination of buying on an educational discount (I'm a contractor at a uni, so get a staff email address), and Apple have now bumped up their prices. So I basically got a free iPad for nine months

I’ve never managed to move over an iPad for note taking either, but find it very useful for red-pen marking construction drawings.
A small moleskin or similar is still my go-to for note taking.

[Mito Man]

Notepad and 4 colour Bic pen doodler here. Haven't found anything that can better it.

[Gavster]

Notepad and 4 colour Bic pen doodler here. Haven't found anything that can better it.

For real

[Jobbo]

I got an Apple Pencil for my recently bought iPad Pro M1 but only because it was seriously discounted. Not sure I’ll ever use it much. Will see.

I did get a Logitech detachable keyboard case which works brilliantly but makes it very heavy. So I also got a discounted Apple Magic Keyboard case thinking the Apple one would be lovely - and it’s just as heavy and you can’t tilt the screen back enough for where I use it, so I’ll probably sell that on.

Overall the iPad Pro with a proper keyboard and trackpad will suit my need to take a usable laptop in holiday; it’s much smaller and (a bit) lighter than my actual laptop. But I will still take a Moleskine and pen.

[Mito Man]

Similarly I just use a MacBook Air for when I'm on the go. I keep looking at lightweight touchscreen laptops like the Yoga because native Windows software runs like crap on MacOs but the Mac is just a joy to use when browsing/typing vs anything Windows based that I can't do it so I just have this weird system where I'm doing everything on Evernote so it seamlessly transfers across.