7 Best Smart Notebooks and E-Paper Tablets for Writing and Taking Notes

You might have wondered: Why are these smart notebooks all basically just tablets? That’s not what I wanted! Hold your horses, mate.

Like we said, the e-notebook market is small at the moment, and a lot of them just … aren’t that great. The Smart Moleskine is really it. So we had to turn to digital notebooks, e-ink (e-paper) tablets that are built for reading and writing on. That led us here, where we have a few different categories of device. To give you some clarity as to what the real differences are, here are our working definitions.

E-Notebook, Smart Notebook: A physical paper notebook that moves your handwriting to some cloud-based file storage. These are mainly for note-taking, journal keeping, sketching, or other written and drawn activities. The goal here is to be a true notebook.

Tablet: A tablet is a multipurpose touch-screen device. You know, a small computer. Most of them have LED screens or variations on one. We are talking the iPad, Galaxy Tab, that kinda thing. In general, this is not what you’re looking for here.

E-Reader: Stylized a number of ways, an e-reader is essentially any tablet with an e-paper screen. That includes e-ink, Paperwhite—there’s a bunch of names for it. In short, the screens are easier on our eyes with less blue light, better for reading. These tend to be smaller and less powerful than the average tablet these days, since their primary use is as a replacement for books.

Digital Notebook: Any tablet that has an e-paper or e-ink screen and is meant for note-taking. The overlap between these and e-readers is admittedly large and nebulous. Both have touch screens, but digital notebooks typically have dedicated apps and features for note-taking. Often, they will come with a stylus for writing.