Is GoodNotes still good?! | GoodNotes 6, New Features, AI, Pricing

good news has just recently released its newest version good note 6. in this video we'll be diving into the newest features and improvements of this release many of it being advertised as utilizing AI technology and I'll wrap up my thoughts on whether I think it's worth upgrading ticket Note 6 if you haven't yet so let's get started pricing so I don't think it'd be fair to begin with the new features or changes ticket Note 6 without first discussing the new pricing structure and the controversy surrounding it unfortunately if you want to upgrade to get Note 6 it will come at a cost now if you're familiar with goodnotes you know that this same change occurred when they launched goodnotes 5. because previously no takers and digital planners like myself were using goodnotes for now good notes 5 came out as a separate app from goodnotes four so you only paid a one-time cost for goodnotes five if you did want to upgrade but you still had easy access to goodnotes 4 as its own app on your iPad this time however good note 6 is not a secondary app but an update or refacing of goodnotes 5. after testing out good note 6 for some time I think releasing it as a separate app from goodnotes 5 would have made more sense in this case as they did when they went from goodnotes four to five because one the update is relatively minor as you'll see later but most importantly number two they changed to a subscription based pricing model based on my guess is the introduction of some AI features you'll have to pay to update goodnotes 5 to good note 6. regardless of whether you already paid for goodnotes five now goodness promises continue pushing out bug fixes and app performance updates to the notes 5 until at least iOS 18 which we would expect to come out not this September but the following Burger notes 5 users can expect no new features or changes to the app which obviously comes at a disappointment especially since there hasn't been a major update from goodnotes in a long while you can subscribe to goodnote6 for 9.99 US dollars a year or you can pay a one-time cost of 29.99 which is over a 20 price jump from the previous one-time cost for goodness five there is also a limitation of purchasing the one-time tier so if you opt to pay for good notes yearly you'll be able to sync across platforms iOS Android and Windows whereas if you pay the one-time cost you will only be able to sync between iOS devices one important note is that syncing between iOS Android and Windows is not yet available anyway they haven't pushed that out yet it also seems like they might lock out one-time purchasers from future updates to the Note 6 due to the language that's on their website except in cases where new optional purchasable items are added which is language we do not see under the annual subscription model according to their website there is a free version of the Note 6 and you can opt into the seven day free trial to test out their new features or you're limited to three notebooks now they are offering tiered discounts based on when you purchase goodnotes five and they implemented these discounts after announcing good note 6 since they got a lot of criticism for the change the discounts range from 20 to 100 off if you purchased within 2023 again this unfortunately means that if you purchase before 2023 you will not receive any discount new features now let's discuss the new features of good note 6 there's only a handful of changes and most are related to the user interface which doesn't ultimately change the way that you use the app the overall interface is more cartoony and vibrant and they've implemented a sidebar which can be displayed or hidden in this sidebar you can see that they've fully launched their marketplace where you can download free and paid resources to use throughout the app much of an app's profit does come from micro transactions so I'm not surprised to see it fully integrated here into good note 6. versus just having it as an occasional pop-up shop like we saw in goodnotes 5. the free options that are available are nice and you might enjoy using those for note taking or planning within the in-app Marketplace you can also find interactive exam prep though there's currently not a lot of options available I do like the interactive prep I was huge in doing a lot of prep for standardized tests especially before entering University because I was trying to test out of taking certain classes especially math because of how many math classes I needed to take for my degree one of the features you'll notice when doing these interactive exam prep documents is their AI math assistant which they push pretty heavily in their announcements of course there's a lot of discussions and critiques on AI outside of goodnotes just using it for learning and getting help with homework and schooling when I was in university I found these step-by-step solvers like Wolfram Alpha and symbolab immensely helpful if I missed the in-person tutoring sessions that my Tas often held unfortunately in his current state I did not find the good note 6 AI math assistant to be all that helpful I kept getting errors when attempting to solve the equations during these interactive exam prep documents now I have been out of school for two years now but I've taken really advanced math classes and even I was second guessing my work when it said my first or second step was incorrect when I looked at their hints their first and second steps matched mine so it seems to have an error with being able to read and understand some of what you've written there's also a number of different ways a problem can be solved and it didn't seem clear if the AI math assistant was aware of those other possibilities as well of course I'm sure this will improve over time as a lot of AI models are supposed to but I'd caution relying on this feature at all when using good note 6. speaking of math there is a new writing gesture in good note 6 for it if you used the convert handwriting tool in Go notes 5 then you're already familiar with this function you can now just convert handwritten equations to text as well as a side note goodnotes has announced that they will be adding the math conversion at ticket notes five again after getting that feedback and criticism over this minor change to this tool in all honesty I'm not sure how practical that feature will even be it's definitely something I wouldn't have ever used for my math classes if this feature was available for me then but if you like to have your equations shown as a font over your own handwriting you'll have that at your disposal so back to this interface you can now change the colors of the folders this has been a highly requested feature for years and they finally implemented it into good note 6. you can only select from a small amount of colors and you can also choose icons to differentiate your folders again another very small change and that's the feature goodnotes users have been asking for and wanting for years once inside your notebooks or your digital planner you'll notice the toolbars have changed quite a bit as well I find them to be less streamlined because now we have three bars versus the two of goodnotes five the top bar shows the notebooks or documents you have open the second bar is reserved for your thumbnail view your search icon those same bookmarking adding pages and exporting functions that you're familiar with and now the reading and writing mode icon the typing icon which converts your document into a more suitable setup for typing notes and then they also did add audio for your note taking the third bar is contextual and changes depending upon if you're in writing or in typing mode and has the universal functions you're familiar with in these note-taking apps overall it just feels a bit more clunky and I feel like the first and second toolbars can be condensed by combining the two they attempted to account for the multiple toolbars by decreasing the size of the icons in the very last toolbar which ultimately makes them look heavier and like they don't belong when you compare them to the icons in the second toolbar and the ones used throughout the app the interface just feels heavy clunky and out of place next we have new writing gestures in addition to the math conversion function that I discussed previously the first gesture is scribble to erase which is different than scribble as part of the iPad as a whole if you make a mistake or want to remove your handwriting or drawing you no longer have to select the Eraser tool you can just scribble it out using the pen and continue writing it's so ingrained in me to use a separate tool for writing in a separate tool for erasing after taking digital notes for so long but I can definitely see how a feature like this can speed up your workflow in your note taking the next writing gesture is circle to lasso instead of using the lasso tool to select your writing or your drawing you can use the pen to encircle it then tap on the circle you drew to lasso and move the inner contents again this way you don't have to switch to another tool this is another one of those quick changes you might enjoy to speed up your workflow or your note-taking now let's clear that good notes and literally every other company out there is trying to find a way to integrate AI into their business into their products in my opinion it's overdone now and sometimes creates more friction in work than it would otherwise I feel like some AI tools are just becoming kind of gimmicky and I feel like one of those gimmicky AI things is the spell check goodnotes has introduced into this upgrade when you are writing and spell a word incorrectly or a word that it thinks is incorrect a red line will appear alerting you of the air when you tap the word you'll get a spell check option to select the right word and it will correct the word using an AI generated handwriting that is supposed to match your own in my experience the handwriting looks nothing like mine and often the corrected word overlapped or interfered with the rest of my writing this might just be one of those things that improves over time and if it gets better I think it is pretty cool but for right now I think it's pretty gimmicky a way to kind of show off AI for digital note taking and I find that just using the scribble 2 erase feature that they added and rewriting your error might work out way better mileage may vary here though in the same way they've introduced another AI writing Aid word complete so as you're writing out the word it will attempt to complete it using that AI generated handwriting the last new feature is being able to customize the templates in the template Library before you could only select from specified sizes and colors of the templates but now you can choose different colors and even customize some of the accent colors now you might not use all of the templates and covers in the library but if you do you now have more personalization options and it can increase the variety of your templates for note-taking I found this update to unfortunately be pretty lackluster especially when compared to other note-taking apps that I feel are packed with a lot more features but the interface and ease of use have always been strong points of good notes a line that I think is being played with a little bit here with the clunkier changes to the toolbars however goodnotes has promised there are more features on the way such as password protected notebooks a pencil tool and internal links between Pages again all features that have been highly highly requested from users over the years but again a lot of note-taking apps already have so I do find it odd that they push out good note 6 without taking the time to also add those promised features I really felt like a lot of the rush here was to share the work that they've been doing behind the scenes to implement these AI features into their note-taking app with many students starting classes in school again and to just go ahead and have folks switch over into their news pricing structure [Music] so my final thoughts now as promised I said in the beginning that I would share my thoughts on whether I thought upgrading from goodnotes 5 to good note 6 would be worth it after spending some time testing out the new features that were added and taking into account their new pricing structure I don't feel comfortable recommending students or those who use good notes for digital planning to upgrade to good note 6. at least not right now I think the new features are very small almost negligible and kind of difficult to figure out and find and I wasn't really using them enough in my planning or not taking session to feel like they were worth paying thirty dollars outright for the app or switching over to a subscription model when it's still nearly identical to goodnotes five which only cost 7.99 when it was live unfortunately it won't be long before good notes 5 is dissolved entirely within the next one to two years and they have to force people who are on the downgraded version of the app to switch into goodness six which will lead people to make the difficult decision into switching to yet another subscription or finding an alternative the thing with apps in app development is it's difficult to grow and put new resources into an app if you're not continually being funded through a subscription which is why we see more and more apps and services switching to a subscription-based model many of course are worth it especially if it's crucial for your workflow I just find it a tough spot to be in especially knowing you all my audience and your priorities and your values so I think some of the new changes are nice but it is kind of underwhelming so stick with good notes 5 for now and maybe you can put off the decision of switching to goodness six for a bit longer I am interested to hear if you're upgrading to the Note 6 and all of your thoughts on everything It's just tough out there thank you so much for watching and I will see you in my next video bye

Channel: KDigitalStudio

Views: 218,206

Keywords: goodnotes 5, ipad pro, goodnotes, goodnotes 6, goodnotes 6 review, is goodnotes still good, is goodnotes worth it, is goodnotes 6 worth it, goodnotes 6 ai features, ai digital notetaking, digital notetaking, digital note taking, digital note taking goodnotes, goodnotes digital note taking, goodnotes 6 tutorial, goodnotes 6 release date, goodnotes vs notability, goodnotes 6 cost, goodnotes 6 subscription, goodnotes subscription, goodnotes features, ipad note taking, ipad

Id: Z9MiL5vxXPg

Length: 15min 14sec (914 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 18 2023