You might want to try an ipad pro + pencil. Personally I like the lack of friction, I can zoom in and out as I write etc. My notes also end up much neater than on paper, particularly during math lectures and when writing proofs, when you always have a bunch of false starts and dead ends!
I also always had a personal hangup about highlighting or writing notes on books ("sacrilege!" :) ), it always felt like I would ruin the book for a future reader. So during a lecture, it's nice to have a PDF copy of the text book imported into the notes software, then I'll sometimes cut and paste diagrams from the book into my notes, or just write notes on the book itself, depending on the situation. It's also pretty nice to be able to take a pic of the board if a prof is going too fast for me, put it directly into the note, then just rewrite it when I get a chance later.
Personally I use notability, which I think is nice, but sometimes gives me problems with syncing and access to my notes when icloud has some bug. So I switch on the setting for backup the entire note to google drive (you can use any cloud storage), just so I can always get access to my notes. It's "only" happened two or three times in three years, but... I think it is an icloud issue, not a notability issue, but I feel like they should be able to architect it so that the local notes are still available in the event of an icloud issue, whereas what actually happens is the local notes disappear - hence the need for the separate cloud backup of the note files!
I also always had a personal hangup about highlighting or writing notes on books ("sacrilege!" :) ), it always felt like I would ruin the book for a future reader. So during a lecture, it's nice to have a PDF copy of the text book imported into the notes software, then I'll sometimes cut and paste diagrams from the book into my notes, or just write notes on the book itself, depending on the situation. It's also pretty nice to be able to take a pic of the board if a prof is going too fast for me, put it directly into the note, then just rewrite it when I get a chance later.
Personally I use notability, which I think is nice, but sometimes gives me problems with syncing and access to my notes when icloud has some bug. So I switch on the setting for backup the entire note to google drive (you can use any cloud storage), just so I can always get access to my notes. It's "only" happened two or three times in three years, but... I think it is an icloud issue, not a notability issue, but I feel like they should be able to architect it so that the local notes are still available in the event of an icloud issue, whereas what actually happens is the local notes disappear - hence the need for the separate cloud backup of the note files!