Notability vs GoodNotes 5 // Which is the BEST iPad Note taking App? (2021)

alexa turn on the vibe all right just got my new ipad and i'm going to start taking notes with it no more notebooks pens and pencils carrying all those notebooks everywhere that stinks so all i got to do now is decide in a note-taking app i don't know which one yet but i'm sure there's plenty of reviews out there the best one i'm just gonna do a little research right now i wanna see the best thing i can do all right let's see what's going on google best no taking apps for the ipad all right this article looks good let's go with that all right let's see what's number one notability i like the way that flows off the tongue look at this multi awards that sound pretty good what else is there 899 what there's got to be another one not as expensive all right good notes five probably take some good notes with that you know what i'm saying let's get a bunch of stuff 7.99 too oh my god i'm just a broke college student i don't got money for both of them there's got to be a clear-cut winner notability good notes notability good notes i don't know which one yeah i'm gonna get both hey yo what's going on youtube nathan here so about a year ago when i got my ipad one of the first apps that i ended up getting was notability for school homework assignments note-taking and everything and it's been great for me but with this upcoming semester about five weeks now i've been into it i want to do like a little self experiment for myself and i downloaded goodnotes 5 and i wanted just to try it out these two apps are very similar they're neck and neck and a lot of people compare them a lot and i wanted to see which one was better for me personally and so after about five weeks of using good notes 5 i now feel like i have a pretty good understanding of both apps and i wanted to give you my personal experience with both of them and a comparison between them before i get into the comparison though if you're new to this channel and you're interested in tech just like i am then please subscribe down below as i don't want you missing my future videos and we also just passed 50 subscribers so thank you to every one of you who subscribed so far it means a lot to me and i've only been doing this for two months right now and 50 subscribers is huge to me and i'm super excited just to keep growing and keep making more videos and so without wasting any more time here's my comparison between notability and good notes 5. so the first category i want to cover is the organization between the two apps and this is probably the most drastic difference between the two as they have very different organizational layouts so looking at notability first it has a very simple but easy to navigate organization system going to the top left and pressing the plus button you can either add a subject or a divider you organize the subjects you want into the dividers so the way i have my note set up is i'll use the dividers as my class names and then within the dividers i have the corresponding subjects for each class so i usually have subjects for lecture notes homeworks study guides and whatever else could be in that class such as labs or worksheets then when you press on the subject it has all my individual documents for that specific part of the class as you can see notability's organization is very simple and easy to follow so with notability what i didn't realize when getting into it and honestly the reason why i wanted to try good notes five in the first place is that you can't like close out your dividers and like store them somewhere else without just straight up deleting the divider so before i had my ipad i used my surface book 2 and microsoft's onenote for all my note-taking and in that the notes are backed up to microsoft so you can close out a notebook and it'll just disappear for you and then whenever you want it you can go back in and reopen the notebook and it kept things really clean and organized for me with notability though all my dividers are still there from last semester and i really just didn't want to have like 10 plus dividers open from classes i don't even like need anymore and so that's kind of like what intrigued me to go over to goodnotes 5 because of their organizational system this is my only gripe and it's me just being nitpicky and if you organize your notes a different way this might not even affect you at all but i'm really hoping with a future update they allow you to close dividers without having to actually delete them now looking at goodnotes 5 organizational system it's very similar to a computer setup where there's notebooks and then files or folders inside of them so pulling up goodnotes 5 pressing the large plus square will give you multiple options such as adding a new notebook folder image scanning a document taking a photo importing a document and making a quick note i mainly only ever use notebooks and folders so now looking at how i organize things on goodnotes 5 i have one folder for the first semester of my senior year and when i press on it you can find all five of my classes inside and inside of each folder is the corresponding content for that class when i press on a class i have all my lecture slides in there a notebook for quick notes and then any other folders to further organize such as homeworks or case studies you can also change the file view with the list icon towards the top right which will manage it from a document view to a scrolling view and these can be sorted by the date they were created name or type of document i like to stay as organized as possible and good notes 5 organizational system really allows me to do that with their folders for each class i'm able to put specific types of work in folders for those classes and i never have to worry about where something is and i can find it very easily and so while notability's organization is a lot cleaner and more simple you can do a lot more with goodnotes 5. so the second category i want to talk about is page customizability so now pulling up notability first you can create a blank note by pressing the little pen and paper button at the top right which will create a blank quick note pressing the three dots at the top right corner and then the paper section will bring up your customization options you can pick from a range of paper colors most of which really aren't that practical for notes but you can if you want and then the type of paper you can pick between plain lined squared and dotted paper with four different sizes for each so now moving over to goodnotes five there's a lot more you can do with this app when creating a notebook you can choose from a large range of different styles and colored covers that make each notebook stand out from one another you can pick from a variety of paper templates from blank dotted squared college ruled accounting monthly planners music paper the list goes on and on and you can also import your own templates if you have them there's a lot more that you can do in goodnotes 5 when it comes to customizability and the fact that you can import your own templates from whatever you have really gives goodness 5 the upper hand over notability and customization so now the next category i want to talk about is note taking features looking at the top bar notability there are buttons for text boxes drawing highlighting erasing a selector and a view mode if you want to type up your notes then you can use the text tool where there are a bunch of options you can indent create a bulleted list and other basic functions such as bold change the font underline the a b and c with the hearts around them are pre-saved favorite font styles for quick access moving over to the drawing tool here you can pick between 12 different pen strokes four different writing styles including a dashed line and a dotted line as well as a bunch of pre-saved colors you can also add any color you want by swiping over and pressing the plus button so if you need a specific color you can find it here by typing in its hex code you can also pre-save any pen you create in the favorites toolbar which is located at the bottom left with the star icon when you press the favorites icon your favorites toolbar will show up and you can move this anywhere around the edge of the screen i frequently change colors while note taking because i'm always drawing graphs or diagrams and having a bunch of colors just to tap away is very convenient for me you can also add erasers and highlighters to this bar moving to the highlighter tool it's the same options as the pen but with highlighters the eraser tool has 12 different sizes to choose from and you can either erase partial strokes or full strokes the selector tool allows you to circle any piece of text and move it wherever resize it change the color duplicate it or copy and paste it somewhere else it's a very helpful tool and i use mine all the time then the view mode allows you to swipe around the page without having to worry about accidentally drawing on your notes to the right of this is a voice recorder and you can use this to record a lecture or study sessions and what's cool is that when you go and replay the audio it'll show you what notes you wrote at the same time the audio is played this is very helpful for studying and trying to figure out how your notes relate to the topic using the plus icon is where you can add images and other documents but also sticky notes that you can draw on and move around the page pressing the multi-page icon at the top right will bring up the view of all your pages in the document and you can bookmark important pages add pages using the three dots on each page and easily delete pages you don't need any more i use the seamless view because i just like scrolling through my notes and when you save as a pdf it actually like does separate them into separate pages as well so you don't have to worry about anything getting cut off then at the bottom right is the zoom icon which allows you to get close to a specific section of your notes and you can add tiny details here if you need it actually drawing when you finish a liner shape if you hold your stylus there for a split second it will adjust it to either be a perfectly straight line or a perfect shape which is a nice thing to have so now going over to goodnotes five writing features a lot of the tools are very similar notability so i'm not going to go as in depth on them but i am going to point out the differences so opening up a note in goodnotes 5 at the top left hand side the a with a square around it icon is the zoom box which acts the same as notabilities moving over the pen tool has more customizability than notability with three types of pens adjustable tip sharpness and pressure sensitivity you can also turn on the draw and hold feature which will make perfect lines and shapes just like notability with goodnotes 5 you can only pre-save three colors in the top bar for quick access but clicking on a color will bring up pre-saved colors that you have in there and you can also search a hex code if you need a specific color you can also save three different pen thicknesses to the right of the colors and you can fine tune these to be exact measurements as well moving on to the eraser you can erase whole or partial strokes but there's only three eraser sizes and you can't adjust these anymore i don't understand why goodnotes 5 doesn't allow you to adjust the eraser size because you can adjust everything else like fine tune it but you're stuck with these three sizes as of right now a good notes 5 but i'm sure in the future there's going to be update that'll allow you to customize that the highlighter has all the same features as the pen such as you can pick any color you want the sizes and you can pre-save them as well then the shapes icon is what you will use if you want to make perfect shapes and you can set them to automatically fill in as well next is the selector tool which acts the same as notability so just circling something and then you're able to move it around the page wherever you want next is the stickers icon where you can add stickers to your notes to make things pop a little more there are a lot to search from and you can even make your own with some of your own photos after this is the import photos icon which is pretty self-explanatory next is the text tool which has all the same features as notability then finally is the laser pointer icon which is very helpful if you're screen sharing or presenting a lecture this allows you to make temporary pen stroke marks that will only last for a second and they show up in this bright red color going over two great features that goodnotes 5 has that notability doesn't are a collaborative mode where you can share notes or a document with someone and then both of you can write on the page at the same time i can see this being very helpful for groups of students who are working on assignments together where they're able to like mark up the page answer questions at the same time and i really wish notability had this as well and the other feature is at the top left the search icon allows you to search specific words in your notes and yes it even brings up your handwritten note it makes it very easy to find a specific note in a large document you can also favor important pages and easily find them later using the foursquare icon at the top left you can also have multiple documents opened at the top and similar to a web browser you can just tap from one to another for quick access you can export documents and notes from both apps by pressing the export button located at the top to left for both applications you can save documents as pdfs email them straight from the app and save them into the files app if you want to so there's a pretty extensive overview of both applications and they have very similar features all throughout and so now you're probably wondering like which one's actually better and so while goodnotes 5 does have way more organization and customizability between the notes the fine tuning of the pens and everything what it really comes down to though is the note taking experience both of these apps are great for taking notes but what i've realized from switching from notability to goodnotes 5 is that notability has so many little features when it comes to actually writing and it saves a lot of time over the course of semester for me personally and how i take notes i'll be able to do more with my notes in a shorter amount of time with less headaches using notability than good notes 5. so i'm going to list all the tiny differences that i've noticed between the two note-taking apps and i want to show you so you can see for yourself why i believe this so the first thing is you can't add exact pages to the size of a pdf you can only add an extra page in either landscape or vertical view landscape is just slightly larger than a normal pdf and the vertical view is just smaller than a pdf and i'm sure there's templates for the exact sizes but in notability i didn't have to search for those exact templates they were right there every time i imported a new page whether it was a powerpoint or a pdf it always fit the page perfectly the next thing i don't like about goodnotes 5 is you can only pre-save three colors at a time with the writing tool i know it might seem like a small thing but during the course of a class i'm always changing colors to either make make little side notes and it's just an extra step in good notes five to add a color it's not just one tap away it's two or three taps away and when you're constantly doing this it makes me miss the favorites bar and notability the next thing i don't like is you can't duplicate in good notes five what you can do is you can copy and paste and again this is just one extra step that when you're constantly duplicating things equations over and over again different graphs and making small changes it adds up over time that one extra step the next thing i don't like is you can't copy and paste part of a pdf what you can do is get the selector tool outline a part of the pdf that you want to save take a screenshot save it to your photos then go to the image icon in the menu bar and import the image from there in notability it's as simple as circling what you want with the selecting tool copying and pasting the image wherever you want the next thing i don't like is that there's no option for a dotted or dashed line with the pencil in goodnotes 5. as an engineer i'm always using the dotted line and being able to make a dotted line hold it for a second and it be perfect is something i use very frequently and not having it makes me miss that feature a lot the next thing i don't like about goodnotes 5 is you can't export a range of pages from one document it's either you can only export the current page you're on or you have to export the whole document the next thing i don't like about goodnotes 5 is there's no seamless view and i just prefer that that's just a little i know it's very tiny but it's just something i prefer and the last thing that i've noticed in my five weeks of using goodnotes 5 is there's no clear page selector when trying to add a page and deleting a page to make sure though that you are there's an extra step in goodnotes 5. by going to the four squares at the top left corner and there you can select a page delete it if you want to but adding a page it's always kind of a guess like if you're on the page itself and then you go to the sidebar and add a page it'll go right below it but there's no indicator to tell you what page you're on specifically so talking about the price of these two apps they come in around about the same notability comes in at 8.99 and goodnotes 5 comes in at 7.99 so it's only one extra dollar so it really doesn't matter which one you're getting they're about the same price but that's just something to point out these are both great note-taking apps and i think the real thing that'll decide for you which one you want is if you want more organization or if you want kind of a better less headache oriented writing experience before i got these apps i was looking at videos just like what i'm making right now kind of comparing the two apps and everyone always gave just a very broad general overview of it and not like the actual little nuances of each app and i really hope that i could help bring that out in this video for you they both come with their pros and cons but for me personally the little things that notability can do that good notes 5 can't is something that makes me want to keep going back to notability i'm probably going to finish up the semester using good notes 5 just because all my documents are in that app already but after this semester i'm probably going to go back to notability because i do miss it i really hope this comparison helped you make a decision as to which note ticket app you're gonna buy so that's gonna be it for this comparison if you learned something new if you liked the video or if i helped you make that purchase decision then please like the video down below and subscribe for more videos as i don't want you to miss anything in the future and also comment down below which one you either have or are getting i kind of want to see like what the community says about this and if goodnotes 5 is actually more popular than notability or not so until the next one have a great day everyone and cheers [Music]

Channel: Nathan Lemoine

Views: 34,424

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Id: Knb4jKcfvGQ

Length: 18min 51sec (1131 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 04 2021