Best Note Taking App for iPad: Notability vs Goodnotes 5 vs OneNote

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Hey! My name is Hafu Go and I'm a dreamer. For the past year, I made it my life mission to study patterns of success for students. I traveled across the world to interview students from top schools like Harvard, MIT, and Stanford. These college tips are what I wish I knew before starting my freshman year. Don't make the same mistakes as me.

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This video has one goal, and that's to decide the BEST NOTE TAKING APP for the iPad Pro 2020.

The competitors are:
Goodnotes - $7.99 USD
Notability - $8.99 USD
OneNote - FREE!

Goodnotes has the best writing experience.
Notability has an audio record function that's unbeatable for lectures.
OneNote is free yet still beats Goodnotes and Notability on numerous categories.

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The Comparison Between Notability vs. Goodnotes 5 vs. OneNote

GOODNOTES 5

PROS
Highlighter self straightens
Eraser auto-deselect is actually a genius feature
Smooth
Templates
Selection tool

CONS
Images can only stay on 1 page
expensive
pages are NOT continuous
Folder organization is a mess - notebooks can't be organized by lecture, you have to put bookmarks
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NOTABILITY

PROS
Audio Record Function
Page viewer - I can move pages around easily
Good organization system

CONS
Note taking writing isn't as smooth as Goodnotes
UX isn't as good as Goodnotes
No colorful covers for notebooks
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ONENOTE

PROS
Pen bar at the top that you can customize
Infinity pages - you can write on the left or right of PDF, no need to worry about making new pages
Notebook organization is pretty good cuz you can have one notebook for 1 Class, each lecture would be a separate Page
Real time sync with PC
Click anywhere to type
More optimized for computers
FREE!

CONS
More lag when writing, there's a flickering
Extremely lagging image inserting

Notability is better than Goodnotes - Get it if you ONLY use iPad
OneNote is better than both if you study on Computer AND iPad
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[jurepog]

Watch this at 1.25 speed. You're welcome.

[sham]

Why am I seeing this when I don't even have an iPad. But thank you for the video it was helpful and clear.

UPDATE: I got my Ipad pro yesterday. YAAAY!

[SebiKoerner]

I’ve watched so many iPad note videos in the past few days. I don’t wanna know how much money Paperlike made Form me watching all of these.

[Foxy-ntgw]

I love OneNote and would never change for any platform, because I can check my notes on any platform I like 💜

[faberd]

I used OneNote throughout my MBA. It has both audio and video recording - at least in the PC version. I recorded video and took notes... it captured the slide deck and the interaction in the class. There is also the ability to add sections and section groups within a notebook.

[justastrawberrymonst]

Based on using these apps for years, here's the best features imo:

Notability: sync audio recording with notes
Goodnotes 4: great to store pdfs of books/textbooks
Goodnotes 5: if you take both typed and hand written notes this app makes it pretty easy to do both
OneNote: being able to zoom out on the document (worst feature: super laggy)

[andreagaclan]

I have just bought an iPad Air and was searching for a good note taking app. I am a user of OneNote since 2013, so I am very happy discovering from your review that OneNote is better than the popular iPad apps good note and notability except of course for the lag which I believe I can manage. But hopefully, Microsoft will do something about it 😊

[danyafernandez]

I have a point for One Note right now. Online classes make teachers go as fast as if someone would be trying to murder them, and they use slides, so I think it is super easy to take screenshots on a computer and then work with the i pad.

[josephmclord]

onenote has notebooks -> section groups - > sections - > pages - > subpages! and it works seamlessly between my iPad, surface, and galaxy note, that's the only reason I'm using it! since it does no discrimination between operating systems

[TheHoAProtagonist]

Goodnotes5 has a great Outline/Table of Contents feature so that if you did want to put all your lectures in one notebook, you can split it up subject within the notebook. Also I find that Notability’s subject and divider sections as the only form of organization are really restricting as compared with GoodNotes you can have folders within folders. One Note is great for classes that are more text based.

[rosaundra_eugenia]

GoodNotes 5 can sync to your phone too. I sync mine all the time. I don’t really care for one note and haven’t tried notability yet. GoodNotes is my go to.

[dhritidhall]

OneNote has the recording function which works just like GoodNote, just letting you all know.

[Jenna_mr]

3:58 It doesn't have to be organized only by notebooks. You can import PDFs independently of a notebook and you can also make folders within folders on Goodnotes. For example, I find it useful to have course folders (ex PSY230) and then within that folder, have folders for lectures, notes, exams, etc.

[vic_chan]

Since I’m going digital with my notes I’m here just doing research before I regret any spendings lol so damn excited to get my iPad and Apple Pencil

[KarlRock]

Thanks Bro. I'll try out OneNote.

[danielainscough]

“The most efficient community”
*Ali Abdaal enters chat*

[AnkurSharma-vtos]

By the way love notability that voice record feature is awsome for student like me

[josephhuang]

Yep OneNote’s infinite scrolling made me use it after watching this video

[soficruz-turner]

if you are downloading or screen shooting a lecture, you can download/send them to goodnotes. it will ask you what file you want it to be in… if you are automatically in the notebook you are wanting to put the downloaded/screenshot ted lecture, you can set it to the specific area of that notebook.

[noragee]

Notability is doing a lot to improve the app. I'm excited to learn about new features every time. This is why I chose Notability. It's alive. OneNote is literally dead. There's only one update per month and it's only about fixing bugs and something like that. It feels like OneNote brings only one new feature per year.
I also agree that Notability has a better file organisation than Good Notes.