7 Best Tablets for Note Taking in the UK in 2022: Reviews & Comparison Table
What is the best tablet for note-taking? There are digital notepads with a wide range of pressure sensitivity, an anti-glare screen, and adjustable front light. They are more expensive, but the price is justified by the advanced technologies they use, such as a Codex operating system. The alternatives include smart reusable notebooks or kits that come with a paper tablet and a digital smartpen. For children, there are easy-to-use and lightweight tablets for drawing and taking class notes.
Tablets for Note-Taking Compared
| Moleskine Pen+ Ellipse Smart Writing Set | Best Trusted | |
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| XP-Pen StarG640 6x4 Inch OSU! Ultrathin Tablet | Best Budget | |
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| Rocketbook Smart Reusable Notebook | |
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| Wacom Bamboo Folio Smartpad Digital Notebook | |
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What Types of Note-Taking Tablets Are Out There?
Note-taking tablets are thin, lightweight electronic devices that simulate what it's like to jot down notes without all the paper waste. They're super handy for students, professors, businessmen, and sketch artists that want to digitally store their notes for long-term use.
Of course, note-taking tablets vary widely in terms of quality, storage options, and price. The best tablets offer a huge swathe of input options, paper types, and Bluetooth-enabled cloud storage.
Many note-taking tablets also offer AI tech that automatically scans written work for searchable terms, keywords, or related notes. More paired-down, barebones tablets only feature the writing surface that can sync to smart devices' cloud storage.
How to Use Tablets for Note-Taking
Note-taking tablets are excellent for optimizing your workflow. Before opting for any particular tablet, you'll want to think about your priorities and how certain features would help streamline your note-taking process.
For a standard model, the best way to take notes is to set up a high-level directory structure for storing different sheets. This will make it easy to search for notes based on the subject for later review.
If your tablet doesn't offer any way to create folders, we suggest sorting notes manually after they've synced to your device.
Review of the Best Note-Taking Tablets
Below, you will find a review of the 7 best note-taking tablets at a price ranging from £18 to £150. While some models are more suitable for note-taking, others are just as great for drawing, too. You may choose a more sophisticated tablet with a wide range of pressure sensitivity and an anti-glare screen or a budget option that acts as a replacement for a traditional mouse. Also, there is a reusable notebook allowing for writing handwritten notes that automatically synchronize with popular cloud services and a lightweight and easy-to-use tablet for kids
1. Moleskine Pen+ Ellipse Smart Writing Set | Best for Storing Notes
The Moleskine tablet collection comes with a paper tablet, a digital smartpen, a smartpen USB charging cable, and a pen tip ink refill.
Designed to capture each stroke, the smartpen transfers what's written on your notebook page right to your device. It automatically digitizes your analog notes, allowing you to search, share, edit, notate, and organize to your heart's content.
Users can even record audio with the device to sync with their notes. The pen is Bluetooth compatible with both iOS and Android devices.
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Moleskine: Check the current price
2. XP-Pen StarG640 6x4 Inch OSU! Ultrathin Tablet | Best Budget Option
Designed for everything from digital art to gameplay, the XP-Pen acts as the perfect replacement for a traditional mouse. With an advanced battery-free stylus, the XP-Pen surface is smooth to draw on and pairs with most operating systems.
Offering over 8,192 levels of pressure, the XP-Pen tablet is precise enough for the most finicky artists out there. A one-click toggle allows users to toggle between the pen and eraser instantly.
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XP-Pen: Check the current price
3. Rocketbook Smart Reusable Notebook | Best Eco-Friendly
Hate wasting paper yet don't want to break the bank for a new smart gadget? The inexpensive Rocketbook allows users to write handwritten notes that automatically sync with popular cloud services.
After writing, users can simply wipe the surface clean and start anew. This allows for both easy reuse and sharing notes within a work environment. The tablet employs AI tech to apply email transcription, searching, and notation in a digital environment.
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Rocketbook: Check the current price
4. Wacom Bamboo Folio Smartpad Digital Notebook | Best Easy-To-Use
The Wacom smartpad allows users to capture all their ideas and then digitally share them with the touch of a button. Once a user is finished with a page, they simply need to tap their pen to toggle through notes.
Handwritten notes can be converted to text, saved as a picture or SVG file, to be exported to apps like Google Drive. It works with any iOS or Android smart device and requires a WiFi connection for note syncing.
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Wacom: Check the current price
5. Best Digital Notepad with actual paper feeling | Reviews
Chris Loh: "It is a notebook in an App that I install on my phone, where I can write on the notebook and then everything I write in the notebook is gonna transfer it to the App. So, what's cool about this is it I'm a person who takes a lot of notes and oftentimes I take notes and then I forget them or I can't find them again. So, this allows me to stay a little bit more organized and potentially allows me to search for anything that I've written in the past that I might need to refer back to.
It does with no problems or lag. If I decide I want to share my notes that I have taken, all I need to do is put a check on the envelope icon in the top right hand corner of the notebook and the App will automatically compose an email with my note included. This is a really cool feature and makes it so easy to share things. I'm not sure if there's a limit but I would assume you can do this as many times as you want for as many pages as you want one thing.
I'd say the one thing. I don't like about the product is the need to buy additional replacement notebooks. It would be great if there was an actual folding tablet or even a reusable notebook but hey they have to continue to make their money somehow anyways."
PAPERLESS MOVEMENT®: "This is a Moleskine book. We talk about a paper notebook and the new smartpen.
The pen well it looks actually very nice, lightweight, very lightweight. I would say it's about the weight of Apple pencil. This is a normal ball pen ink and it actually feels very premium. So, it's really a high quality ball pin and used in there there's a charging cable and there is a replacement for the pen. So, it seems it's not the normal size of these ballpoint pen refills, you have to buy the specific one here, if this runs out, but you get one replacement in the package quickly charge this.
I'm really really impressed about the functionality. It was easy to set up it's instantly showing up. I also learned that it's not crossing out the email but tapping on it. So this means i can use this several times and it's possible to transcribe the pages."
Moleskine: Check the current price
Products with 5 star rating
Testing & Customers Reviews
We found reviews from real YouTube bloggers about the products from our article.
Jake Reeves: "For a few years now I've been looking for a way to go paperless with my note-taking both for the environmental benefits but also just to generally declutter. I've tried out a lot of tablet based apps and while I've grown fond of a few of them at the end of the day I wasn't able to find anything that quite matched the feel of pen on paper. When I started my most recent fellowship six months ago I knew that I was gonna have to start taking a lot of loose form notes I once again started looking for alternatives to traditional paper notebooks. This is when I started using Rocketbooks Core series. These polyester composite page books are a different approach to digital note-taking. You write as you would with a traditional pen and paper. Scan and upload the note using the Rocketbook app once you're done. Then erase the page using a damp cloth and it's ready for reuse. Mobile app scanners have been around for a while now but the Rocketbook system is a little different with a clear focus on simplifying repeated use. The high contrast border surrounding each page speeds up page identification during scanning while a QR code and symbol based page footer work to automatically store the scanned document in one of seven predefined cloud locations corresponding to which symbol is marked off. The Rocketbook app doesn't have the best contrast enhancement that I've seen in a mobile scanner but it's pretty good and something that could be improved over time.
One of the catches with using the Core notebooks is that you can only use the pilot frixion pens. These erasable ballpoint pens are widely available in many colors and sizes and have an almost gel-like feel to them when used with the polyester composite pages of the Core notebooks. This isn't exactly the traditional paper feel that I was initially hoping for but I got used to it pretty quick and found that writing on a little more of an angle helped me to regain the traditional paper feel. The one thing I will say is that the frixion pens traditional eraseability has a poor consequence on the Core pages. After using the standard frixion eraser on the polyester pages you can't write over that area very well until you wipe it down again. The pages are spirally bound between to durable covers allowing you to easily switch between one and two page writing styles this is great if you need to adapt to small tables in the classroom or cafe. But I do find that the binding is a little oversized for how many pages there are. Again not a big deal for most but if you're a lefty you may find this problematic. In place of a traditional leather lined page the Core notebooks use a narrower faded dot pattern. Writing long notes using this layout takes a little getting used to but it's a fair trade considering just how easy it is to sketch out well-proportioned geometric shapes or graphs. Another cool feature of the Core notebooks is the use of optical character recognition to make your handwritten notes searchable within the Rocketbook app. Obviously this depends on how neat your printed lettering is and it also only works if you have the file saved as JPEGs instead of PDFs. But it's a neat feature signaling that there's more to come.
I usually save notes as combined PDFs so I don't use this feature often however if you nest a title between double hash marks at the beginning of a document the app will use this as the title of the file when saving it. A small but effective time-saver and something that I use all of the time. The only real issue that I found with the Core notebooks was the amount of time it took for the ink to dry. It only takes about 15 seconds but if you're left-handed or you need to flip the page over quickly you're gonna have to be on smudge alert. To deal with this I started beginning my notes on the left-hand page first then opening the notebook completely to move to the second page in the hopes that I wouldn't have to flip the page over and smudge out what I just wrote. Finally one thing that I think is poorly advertised about the Core series is its versatility. Each book is between 32 and 48 pages which may not seem like a lot but as long as you stay on top of your scanning it's probably way more than you'll ever need. So if you're looking to make your notebook truly unique you can use a fine tip permanent marker to create your own custom templates. I did this to create a weekly planner layout where I can erase each day independently without removing the agendas divisions. This way it's not just a notebook but also an agenda. I highly recommend doing this but make sure that you plan your template on another page first using an erasable pen ahead of time so that you don't make mistakes when you're using the permanent marker. Overall I recommend these notebooks. They're great cut down on the clutter of paper notes and they strike a nice balance between technology and the traditional writing experience."
Unbox PH: "Most of my friends know that I am completely in love with Moleskin that's why when I saw a Moleskin stand I decided to buy a new notebook but instead of buying the usual mode notebook I bought the Moleskin Smart Writing Set. This one actually has a smart pen which has some sort of built-in camera or infrared camera here and what it does is it instantly digitizes what you are writing or what you are drawing on the notebook into the application. You can even do edits, you can change the colors, you can highlight some stuff, you can change the how thick a certain point is, you can erase certain images and it allows for a fresh take on productivity and picking down notes. And it just makes the overall experience of note-taking and writing so much more fun. It's actually easier to send your notes to your colleagues just by digitizing everything within the app and then pressing send. And what's even cool if you want to send an email you actually just need to tap the email icon or the mail icon with this pen and it will prompt the app to open the mail section of the app and then you can easily send it over to whoever you want to send your notes to.
It's also a great way to visualize idea. So if for example you're putting together some sort books or like a presentation and you need slide layouts or if you want to put some sort of diagram and you need to send it to a friend all you have to do is draw it here put some colors digitize it, well, it instantly digitize it, and then send it over to your friends and your colleagues. So it's very very useful and it's a fresh take on something that has been done for hundreds of years - writing. And while it is expensive it's one of those things that you buy that actually helps you enjoy more while you're at work. It allows you to enjoy productivity more which I think is very rare because most of the gadgets that you get today are mostly gadgets that don't really add too much value or are just incremental upgrades to what you already have and what you already do.
I think the Smart Writings Set of Moleskin is a good buy for people who love taking notes, for people who look after writing and drawing and images illustration as a way to do their work. I don't know if I'm just a huge fan of Moleskin that's why I'm really getting into it but in the last week that I've been using it it's been nothing but fun and it's been nothing but useful and I think those two things fun and useful rarely come together. In terms of battery life here's the good news. I think in terms of writing it's anywhere from five to six hours. I haven't clocked in but there hasn't been the day where this has died on me. And if you need to charge it you just need to use the usual micro USB port and it doesn't take too much time to get a full charge. And you can easily buy ink cartridges from Moleskin. So you just take out the tip and then you buy a new one and then you put it back in."
MobiScribe 6'8 E-Ink Tablet Bundle - 6.8 Digital Notepad | Best Adjustable
Built with capacitive touch-control, the MobiScribe offers 4,096 degrees of finely tuned pressure sensitivity for the most precise stylus control.
One a single charge, the tablet runs for a week of use. The anti-glare screen is viewable from any angle in any lighting. Users can even adjust the front light with warm and cool settings to accommodate any work environment.
The tablet is pre-loaded with tons of document templates, like graphs, dotted sheets, lined sheets, music, and more.
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MobiScribe: Check the current price
reMarkable - The Paper Tablet - 10.3" Digital Notepad | Best for Drawing
Meant for everything from writing to sketching, the reMarkable feels nearly indistinguishable from a good sheet of paper. The device is meant to replace all your printouts, notebooks, and documents in one compact tablet.
Built with a Codex operating system, the device features very low latency on a 226 DPI canvas display. The entire kit comes with a tablet, a stylus, eight different stylus tips, and a folio sleeve for travel.
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reMarkable: Check the current price
Xiaomi Mi LCD Writing Tablet, Electronic Drawing Tablet | Best for Kids
Made from eco-friendly materials, the Xiaomi Mi is a lightweight, portable tablet that can be easily carried anywhere. The writing board makes it easy to take class notes, draw, leave reminders, and more.
The tablet uses LCD pressure tech to capture every degree of pen-applied pressure. Moreover, the purchase comes with an additional high-quality tablet and long-lasting battery replacement.
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Xiaomi: Check the current price
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