Top 10 Digital Notepads for Designers

Arek Dvornechuck
Ebaqdesign™
Published in
8 min readDec 19, 2021
Top 10 Digital Notepads for Designers

Are you looking for a digital notepad for creating your designs? — Check out this list of the best notepads for your creative needs.

If you’re a freelance designer, it would be a great decision if you purchased a digital notebook that you could use for drafting ideas for your designs.

What is the best digital notepad for creatives in 2021?

Digital notebooks allow us to jot down our best thoughts and most significant notes while also benefiting from touchscreen technology’s breakthroughs in writing and drawing.

However, with so many digital notebooks on the market, finding the right one for your graphic design needs isn’t that easy.

Even though having a digital notepad isn’t a requirement for freelance artists — it will be useful for creating drafts or brainstorming ideas that you’re planning to do.

They’ve begun to use notepads to compose their art ideas, among artists, illustrators, and graphic designers.

We’re able to conserve paper, streamline our notes, and reduce our costs thanks to these digital notebooks.

If you’re looking for the best digital notepads available today, this article is for you!

Please note: as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you.

10 Best Digital Notepads for Graphic Designers

  1. reMarkable Notepad — Best overall
  2. Likebook Ares-Note — Best portable
  3. Boogie Blackboard — Affordable option
  4. iPad 8th-generation —Great value
  5. Royole RoWrite — Best for sketching
  6. QuirkLogic Notepad — Most convenient
  7. BOOX Note2 — Most secure
  8. iskn The Slate 2+ — Most innovative
  9. Wacom Bamboo Folio — Best for professionals
  10. Sony DPT-CP1/B — Most high-end

How To Choose A Digital Notepad For Freelance Designers

Because of the different features that many brands are offering, you must be confused or undecided on what to purchase.

How To Choose A Digital Notepad For Freelance Designers

So we created a list of points to consider in choosing the perfect one for you.

  1. Features
  2. Battery
  3. Storage
  4. Applications
  5. Price

The following is a more in-depth description of the importance of these factors:

Features

Check over the features of various digital notepads, keeping your specific demands in mind, before making a final decision.

You should pick a digital notebook that can assist you in sketching your artwork for your design proposal.

There are many different types of digital notepads to choose from, and getting to know their uniqueness will help you pick which one is best for you.

As a graphic artist, choosing the right notepad will be useful for your everyday life, like jotting down creative thoughts, drafting designs, etc.

Battery

Tablets may sound like digital notepads and notebooks, but they’re not precisely the same.

When buying a digital notebook, you have to pay attention to its battery life for you to be able to draft your designs without being interrupted.

When it comes to taking-down thoughts, you don’t want to miss an opportunity because your notebook has run out of power.

That’s why you need to find a digital notebook that lasts for a few days and works with your schedule.

Storage

It’s only reasonable that you’d want to get a digital notepad that won’t stop you from sketching or taking notes.

On that point, when looking for digital notepads and notebooks, the memory of your potential gadget should be a major consideration.

You should choose a notepad that makes it simple to transfer files and save them elsewhere when necessary.

Additionally, wider storage is preferable, especially for creative professionals, so that they can save their drafts and sketches freely.

Applications

Many of these cloud-based digital notepads preserve your notes.

As a result, you should be able to access your notes from other mobile devices as well.

That’s why you should pay attention when choosing digital notepads and notebooks with useful apps.

Choose a product that allows you to study and evaluate what you took notes on with apps that come with the device, whether it’s powered by Android or relies on web apps.

Price

You may not want to spend a lot of money on the latest and greatest goods if there are less expensive but equivalent options available.

You’ll be able to keep within your budget and get the best digital notepad for you if you do some research online.

It is possible to compare the specifications and pricing of digital notepads offered by various websites in order to find the best deal on the same item.

You may also read customer reviews and ratings of the product on several websites to assist you in making a choice between two or more brands.

1. reMarkable Notepad

The reMarkable is the highest-performance digital notepad on our list.

The best overall notepads for designers

This device provides an improved paper-like reading experience, allowing editors and artists alike to quickly sift through notes, alter PDFs, and even review their designs.

reMarkable Notepad

The reMarkable is powered by 512 MB of RAM and an 8 GB hard drive.

This tablet boasts a 10.3-inch screen that effortlessly turns handwritten notes into typed text.

Improve your writing style and process with this discovery, whether you’re an academic or a professional creative!

It’s designed to take the place of your notebooks, printouts, and other paperwork — Innovative technology that will revolutionize the way people work.

reMarkable has a super low latency, 226 DPI CANVAS display, that can provide you with an amazing look at the design that you are working on.

It is the only digital notepad in the world that gives you a paper-like experience.

Specification

Screen size: 10.3 Inches
Weight: ‎12.3 ounces
Resolution: 1872 x 1404pxvs2.22MP
Processor: ‎Codex
Storage: 8GB
Battery: 3000mAh

Pros

  1. Reliable OS
  2. Good storage
  3. Always Synced

Cons

  1. Bulky
  2. Expensive

Buy reMarkable Notepad on Amazon

2. Likebook Ares-Note

The Likebook Ares-Note has a decent 7.8-inch E INk Carta HD screen that perfectly matches the hardback notepad experience but with a little more light.

The best portable notepad for graphic designers

With an Android 8.1 operating system, users can take notes on the go thanks to this digital notepad.

Likebook Ares-Note

When it comes to converting handwritten notes into text, Likebook Ares-Note has an AI system that recognizes handwriting and converts it into readable text.

With this notepad, you’ll be able to draw, read, and make designs with ease!

With its dual-color front light, you can use it in the daytime and at night, making this the ideal size for sketching and drafting designs.

Likebook Ares-Note also comes with a 24 months warranty, that’s why you will be assured that it will last a long time.

With a single click, your creative drafts can be synced to the Youdao cloud and Evernote, as well as shared and forwarded via QR codes.

Specification

Screen size: 7.8 inches
Weight: 295 grams
Resolution: 1404 * 1872 (300ppi)
Processor: Octal Core 1.5GHz
Storage: 2GB + 32GB
Battery: 3200mAh

Pros

  1. Portable
  2. Very responsive
  3. USB Type-C support

Cons

  1. Huge bezel
  2. Poor battery performance

Buy Likebook Ares-Note on Amazon

3. Boogie Blackboard

The Boogie Blackboard is probably one of the best representations of what a digital notepad could seem like.

An affordable option notepads for artists

Furthermore, this Boogie Blackboard comes with a Blackboard app that Android and iOS users can download to save their notes and graphic drafts on their devices.

Boogie Blackboard

This notepad effectively packs an Exact-Erase feature on the writing tablet, providing efficiency, speed, and ease, by utilizing the superior technology of Liquid Crystal paper.

With nothing to charge, plug-in, or switch on, it’s time to get back to the fundamentals.

This Boogie Blackboard comes with blackboard software that makes saving, organizing, searching, and sharing your work, doodles, designs, lists, and simpler.

By automatically recognizing the strokes and structures of handwritten characters, the industry’s top intelligent AI recognition technology enables the synchronized conversion of handwritten and text.

Boogie Blackboard also has a capacity of up to 128GB, so it can suit both your aesthetic and storage needs.

Specification

Screen size: ‎8.5 Inches
Weight: ‎1 pound
Dimensions: 1 x 13.8 x 10.5 inches
Battery: 1 CR123A

Pros

  1. Affordable
  2. Easy to use
  3. Simple and functional

Cons

  1. Low contrast
  2. No undo button
  3. Not for professionals

Buy Boogie Blackboard on Amazon

4. iPad 8th-generation

It would be a disservice to our readers if we left Apple’s iPad off the list.

A great value digital notepad for designers

Despite the fact that the iPad 8th-generation is clearly more than a notepad, the majority of its reviews come from creatives and experts.

iPad 8th-generation

The iPad 8th-generation is one of the greatest go-to options for anyone looking for a reliable gadget to get them through the day and complete tasks like sketching creative ideas.

You’ll be sure to be busy and productive with a gadget as smart and powerful as this, which is powered by Apple’s sophisticated iOS system.

It also has an Apple Pencil (1st generation) and a Smart Keyboard that would make it very convenient for you to jot-down creative designs.

The iPad 8th-generation combines tremendous capability with unmatched ease of use and versatility that would be perfect for graphic designers.

With this iPad, drafting design proposals can be done hassle-free!

Specification

Screen size: 10.2‑inch
Weight: 1.08 pounds
Resolution: 1620 x 2160 pixels
Processor: A12 Bionic
Storage: 32GB, 128GB
Battery: 8827mAh

Pros

  1. Easy to use
  2. Excellent OS
  3. Long-lasting battery

Cons

  1. Pricey
  2. Older design
  3. Unsupported second-gen pen

Buy iPad 8th-generation on Amazon

5. Royole RoWrite

Royole RoWrite is one of the more innovative choices on this list.

The best notepad for sketching designs

This digital notepad combines digital and paper in a unique way, allowing users to write and draw on physical paper before saving it as digital content.

Royole RoWrite

Royole RoWrite allows handwritten sketches and scribbles to be saved on paper and as digital pages.

Because physical drawings and notes are stored digitally, artists and creatives can make any changes they need on their computers right away.

Despite the fact that Royole RoWrite is not a tablet, it is nevertheless a digital offering that streamlines and simplifies the completion of activities and creative endeavors.

By revising or enhancing digital pages in real-time, you may bring your notes or sketches to life.

The ink pen from Royole RoWrite provides a natural and realistic pen-to-paper experience — It’s a refillable ballpoint pen with 2048 pressure points captured by built-in pressure sensor electronics.

Specification

Dimensions: 8 x 1.2 x 11.1 inches
Weight: ‎1.95 pounds
Battery: 1 Lithium

Pros

  1. Perfect for artists
  2. Great connectivity
  3. USB Type-C support

Cons

  1. Too small
  2. Lag issues

Buy Royole RoWrite on Amazon

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