Over the last few months, I was again looking for some “better” notetaking solutions. I re-tried tools like Standard Notes, Simple Note, Logseq, Evernote, and a few others that I don’t even remember.
After trying all these tools for 2-3 days, I came back to Obsidian as no other tool was offering me what Obsidian offers.
In this post, I will explain what I disliked about Evernote, Simple Note, Standard Notes, and Logseq. And why I chose Obsidian.
Problems with notetaking apps that I tried
Let’s go through each of them one by one…
1. Evernote
To me, Evernote doesn’t feel like a writing app, it feels like an information storing app, information that you save for future reference while browsing the internet.
Some of the things that I don’t like about Evernote are:
- the interface is not clean and very user-friendly
- the free version is very limited
- if not using keyboard shortcuts, creating a new note takes 2-3 clicks
- you don’t own the notes, if Evernote is down, you’re down (if your notes were not synced offline)
- writing experience doesn’t seem very good to me
- newer updates have made it more distracting
I still use Evernote to store articles, images, and PDFs for future references as it provides search functionalities which is not provided by any other notetaking tool.
But I don’t write inside Evernote.
2. Simple Note
While Simple Note is a very clean, intuitive, and completely free notetaking tool, it’s not reliable. It’s created by Automattic and it’s not a dedicated note-taking platform so if in the future they don’t see it going anywhere, they might easily decide to kill the project.
Here are some things that I don’t like about Simple Note:
- notes are not synced offline, if you do not have an access to the internet, you can’t retrieve or take new notes
- doesn’t allow to host images or attach files to the notes
- not reliable
However, I really like the fact about Simple Note is that it is 100% free to use and provides a multi-device sync feature. You can even make notes public and share them as a URL.
3. Standard Notes
Another great product, the main highlight is it enables you to take 1000% encrypted notes. I tried the free version but it didn’t work for me.
Here are some things why I didn’t go with it:
- only text notes, not even markdown support
- can’t add headings and even bold or highlight texts
- no way to add/embed images on pages
- can’t make pages public
- no option to export a page in PDF format
Again, Standard Notes provides a multi-device sync feature which I really like.
4. Logseq
I was very happy when I discovered the Logseq tool, but it didn’t work for me either.
- you can take notes only in the bullet point format
- writing long-form articles/notes is not possible
The interface is very clean and intuitive but it’s just that not being able to write long-form content is the deal-breaker for me.
But why Obsidian?
I have been using Obsidian for a few years now and the things I love about the tool are:
- quick, simple, and intuitive interface
- the daily notes feature where you can quickly write down your thoughts without creating a new note manually
- a fast mobile app that can be synced with the desktop app
- runs offline — works great for me while traveling
- distraction-free writing experience
- a powerful tagging and search feature
- interesting Obsidian tools (like Markbase) are incoming soon
- a huge community
- open-source and completely free to use (unless you’re using the sync feature, however, the sync works with Google Drive too)
- the graph feature is another thing that I use to visualize the parts of the notes folder
And I don’t think there are any negative things about Obsidian that I can think of.
What do you think? What tool do you use?
Let me know in the comments below.
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