External digital pen tablets (e.g. wacom) for note-taking on a laptop

[Argon]

Hi everyone. I have a 15" laptop (Dell, Win 8.1) that I use all the time, but since I take science/engineering classes it gets a little inconvenient to take notes with just the keyboard. I want to buy an external tablet that I can use with a digital pen to take notes, perhaps with OneNote. Ideally I'd just buy a Surface Pro 3, but I don't need something that expensive.

 

I was thinking of getting the Wacom Intuos Pen and Touch Small Tablet, but I don't know if anyone has any other/better suggestions. What I want is something small enough that I can take out in a classroom setting, allows me to rest my palm on it and write at the same time (because that's how I write), and is fairly precise. I'll be taking a mix of typed/hand-written (for math and figures) notes. Any ideas?

Edited May 29, 2015 by Argon

[Cheshire_Cat]

I have one and I enjoy playing around with it.  I've never taken notes, but I can see how it would be useful for such a purpose.  Mine is about the size of my ipad mini.  I got it at Best Buy.  They have a great return policy, so I would suggest buying one there, trying it out for a couple of weeks to see if you like the feel of it, and returning it if you don't.  

[Argon]

Thank you so much for your response! I think I'll give it a go. If it doesn't work for my purposes I can just return it like you said. Cool!

(Also, I love the Mayday user pic! Easily one of my favorite albums I've listened to.)

[Cheshire_Cat]

Cool!  I don't think many people know Mayday Parade, but they are one of my favorite, and the cover art for their albums is really interesting looking, IMO.

[Sarochan]

I personally would not recommend a tablet for note taking. I use one for digital art, but I would hate to take notes on it. I suppose it would depend on the program you were using to take notes with, but I find that writing is difficult and generally uncomfortable on the tablet. I'd also find it pretty uncomfortable to support a tablet one-handed, even a small one. Of course, YMMV.

I would choose one of those Livescribe things over taking notes on my tablet, if I were looking for a way to take notes digitally.

[lxwllms]

I sometimes use my tablet (Samsung galaxy note 10.1). It has the ability to run two programs side-by-side, so I can have a sort of "paint" thing open for drawing figures, and a notepad open for text notes. Although it's around ~$400 so probably not what you're looking to pay!

I'd also recommend a livescribe pen. ~$100 although you'll have to use their special paper.

[gaohuan]

all the graphics drawing tablets are actually designed for art and thus can be used for writing as well. It'll be slightly tough to look at the screen while you're writing on a different surface and might take some getting used to but soon you'll get the hang of it.

I prefer XP-Pen over Wacom as the price is Much lower. I use my XP-Pen Star g430s drawing tablet with a stylus pen for note taking & digital writing. for plain text and code, typing is obviously a lot faster, but when you don't have the patience to do so otherwise because there's diagrams involved , using a tablet for notes is perfectly feasible.