Best Tablet for Taking Notes in 2023 – Reviews & Buyer’s Guide

The 12.9 inch iPad Pro is a note-takers dream product. Launched first in 2015, the iPad Pro has evolved in each of its generations to add new features that keep the product in the top position every year.

The iPad Pro 4th gen is lightweight (1.39 pounds). It runs on the super-fast A12Z Bionic chip (compared to the A12X in the 3rd gen version). The new iPad Pro is available in a minimum configuration of 128GB (going up to 256, 512, and 1TB options). It has 6GB RAM built into all the models. The 3rd gen had 4GB RAM in all models (except the 1TB option).

The iPad Pro 12.9 has a brilliant display with 2732 x 2048 resolution that provides 600 nits of brightness and a pixel density of 264 per inch, doing note writing and making sketches an absolute pleasure.

Apple has been moving the iPad in a direction it becomes a laptop replacement. The magic keyboard and trackpad introduced along with the iPad Pro 12 was a fabulous step in this direction, making it a 2-in-1 device.

The Magic keyboard (sold separately) makes the iPad Pro into instant writing and drawing canvas with an adjustable tilt angle. It gives a great typing experience if you love taking many notes and are not that comfortable with the smaller on-screen keypad.

Let us come to the display quality. Three key things to underline are:

ProMotion: It refers to the 120Hz refresh rate of the iPad Pro screen, which makes the screen awesome for movies, graphics, and all kinds of gaming.

True Tone: True Tone adjusts to ambient lighting, making things look as natural as the brain would perceive them if you were in front of them. True Tone ejects reflected light and shows you the light coming off the object in question DCI-P3: DCI-P3 is the color gamut of the iPad Pro, which has about 26% more colors than the sRGB, which is the usual standard for most monitors. It is equivalent to the color palette of most digital movies.

The 2nd gen Apple Pencil (not included) is a perfect companion that you should purchase for note-taking. In its latest version, the Apple Pencil has many features such as Wireless charging, Magnetic pairing, High precision with good pressure sensitivity, amazing tilt functionality, and little lag while writing.

Note-taking and collaboration require fast wireless connectivity. With Wi-fi 6 and Gigabit-class LTE (comparable to 5G), the iPad Pro provides a great collaboration platform.

The iPad Pro comes with a super 12MP camera with a LiDAR scanner, 4K video, Smart HDR, and a 10MP wide camera lens. It has 10-hour battery life.

This is among the best note taking devices. If you are a student or a professional looking for a bang for buck product compared with Apple’s iPad Pro, Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 should be your go-to tablet. Considering that it’s several hundred dollars cheaper than the iPad Pro, the Galaxy Tab S6 gives the Apple product a run for its money in terms of features.

First of all, the Tab S6 is not just a tab; it’s a laptop hidden in a tabs skin. All you need is to buy a keyboard cover, and you have a tab that converts to a powerful laptop in seconds.

With a 10.5-inch screen size, it’s smaller than the iPad Pro. But with a screen resolution of 2560 x 1600 and brilliant colors, it makes up for the smaller size.

Coming to the stylus, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 includes the lovely S Pen as part of the shipped product. The pen sticks to the back of the pad magnetically and can connect to the tab through Bluetooth, letting you control your tab without having it in your hand. But that’s the least of its benefits.

With a pressure sensitivity of 4,096, the S-Pen is the perfect note-taking device that reduces fatigue on your hand and fingers while letting you write, sketch and draw out your notes with perfect and detailed precision.

When you are taking notes, the last thing you want is your tab’s battery to die out. The Galaxy Tab S6’s battery will last you a cool fifteen hours. It has fast charging that lets you be ready for the day’s lessons in a half-hour if you forget to charge the tab overnight.

Some other cool features include Pop Up view and Split-screen that let you look at other things while taking your notes. This feature is useful if you want to refer to some source such as Wikipedia.

There is a transparency option that allows you to take notes while watching a video or during lectures, which is useful for note-takers. With Air Action gestures, you can make some great PowerPoint presentations from the tab itself.

The product weighs a mere 0.95 lbs, and in terms of connectivity, it has all the options, including Bluetooth 5 and Wi-fi. You can opt for 128GB or 256GB external storage for saving your notes, pictures, and videos.

Note-taking is not always about the written word. Students of art and drawing, biology, architects, mechanical engineers, and people in many other professions want a tab they can jot notes interspersed with illustrative, rough drawings that they can recall at the press of a button. We understand this, which is why the “Drawing Tablet” Wacom Cintiq 22 is on our list.

Note: This is not a full-fledged tablet; it is a drawing tablet meant for drawing and note-taking purposes. It has to be connected to a laptop or computer for it to work.

The Wacom Cintiq 22 has a best-in-class pressure sensitivity of 8,192 pressure points. To add to this, it has 60-degree tilt recognition and needs little effort to draw.

Coming to the pen, it glides across the surface, making beautiful, straight, and crisp lines.

What makes the pen good is that it is battery-less: you can write and draw as much as you want without the pesky charging downtime needed with other styluses.

Adding on to this, the Cintiq 22 comes with an adjustable stand that turns the tab into an instant canvas, and you can make brilliant pictures on the tab.

Another must-have for making sketches is that you need a great display with a huge color palette. The Cintiq 22 does not disappoint with its huge 21.5-inch screen that can display 16.7 million colors in HD quality (1920 x 1090).

Its gamut of 72% NTSC is a bit low compared to other graphics tab, but the tab is great if you are looking for a bit of drawing and taking notes.

The screen is anti-glare and scratch-resistant, so you don’t need to worry about your eyes as you sit in long sessions taking notes.

The Cintiq 22 has a smaller brother in the Cintiq 16, in case you find the 22 a bit big for your use. It has a 15.6-inch screen and similar specs as the Cintiq 22.

One thing that is lacking with the Cintiq 22 is wireless connectivity options, though you do get an HDMI & USB option to connect to your laptop.

If you have grown up with the Windows OS + Intel processor configuration, the MS Surface Pro lets you know that environment in a tab. With its super-fast Intel Core i5 / i7 processor and Windows 10 Home OS, the Surface Pro is our third 2-in-1 laptop + tab product in this lineup.

The Surface Pro adapts to how you want to use it – a standard laptop, a canvas for viewing movies or creating art, or a tab for taking notes and other smaller apps.

Coming to note-taking abilities, let’s first talk about the screen. The 12.3-inch screen compares in size to the iPad Pro, with a similar screen resolution (2,736 x 1,824). The pixel density (267) is similar to the iPad Pro 12.9 (264). It has a 3:2 aspect ratio, which gives you a bit more space to use vertically than the usual 16:9 configuration.

Coming to speed, the Surface Pro 7 has managed a large leap over its predecessor, with Intel’s 10th Gen Core i5-1035G4 and i7-1065G7 processors as compared to the 8th gen processors in the Surface Pro 6. The 10th gen processors have additional power and are more energy-efficient, meaning better battery life.

If we compare it with the Apple iPad Pro, the Surface Pro’s processor has a lower base clock frequency (1.1GHz for the MS vs. 1.6 GHz for the Apple) but higher max clock speed (3.7Ghz MS vs. 2.6GHz for Apple).

The iPad Pro is an octa-core processor against the Surface Pro’s quad-core processor. The iPad Pro uses its processor’s full power for graphics, the Surface Pro has a separate GPU (Iris Plus Graphics) that has lower performance.

The battery life of both the Surface Pro 7 and iPad Pro is similar. It has a rapid charge, which charges upto 80% of the battery in under an hour.

Coming to the oft-repeated question of the Surface Pen (arguably the weakest link in the Surface Pro-environment) – the new Surface Pen is a welcome change. It is lighter than the Wacom Pen, has the same sensitivity (4,096) as the iPad Pro, and does well with tilt and sketching. The drawback is that it needs batteries for charging (4 AAAA batteries). Like the Apple Pencil, you need to buy the Surface Pen separately.

Other great features include a studio-quality mic and great speakers. In terms of connectivity, the Surface Pro 7 comes with Wi-fi 6 and Bluetooth 5; it does not support cellular network connectivity, limiting its use during travel a bit.

The S6 Lite is the best note taking tablet for college

Having reviewed the Galaxy Tab S6 above, I will cover the S6 and S6 Lite differences.

The main difference is in the display – the S6 Lite comes with a TFT display compared to the S6’s SuperAMOLED screen. AMOLED is thinner, lighter, and has better colors. TFT depends on its backlight, unlike the AMOLED screen. The screen has a 224-pixel density and a smaller resolution (1200x 2000). The configuration is good for regular note-taking.

Both models have equivalent configuration and support Wi-fi, Bluetooth 5, and Cellular options in terms of connectivity.

This is, in our opinion, the best note taking tablet with stylus. The S6 Lite has a rounded S-Pen as compared to the S6, which is easier to write. The S6 Lite has the 64GB 4GB RAM option, which was not present with the S6.

The S6 Lites camera is a bit disappointing, with the 8 MP front camera. It’s slightly heavier at 1.5 pounds. The battery life is around 12.5 hours.

All of this pales in comparison when looking at the price point. It costs about half the price of the Galaxy S6 Tab. The S6 lite is the perfect companion tab for students looking for a note-taking tab that is reasonably priced but offers high-end features.