The way I manage this part of my work is the following setup:
* iPad mini retina
* Adonit Jot Pro (stylus)
* Adonit Jot Tote (A protective case, fitting with the smart cover, and holds the stylus)
* UPad for iPad (note taking app)
It's a setup small and light enough that I'm not worried about 'bulking' the small profile of the mini, but also solid enough I can throw it into my bag and haul it around without worrying about protecting it.
The note taking app allows for handwriting into a box that is then represented on the page (so I can write big and have it appear small and readable on-page).
I've been using this since each of the products was released and it would be extremely difficult to replace any part for me.
This product might be cheaper, but I would say the number one advantage of my setup is that at any time I can just use it 'as an ipad' and not a notetaking business device.
Boy, that may work for you, but I find the Upad interface to be vastly inferior to writing directly on an active digitizer with background transcription (e.g., Onenote on a TabletPC). An iPad Mini (with equivalent battery life) that works like a Surface Pro would be the holy grail for me. I've been dreaming of such a device for better than a decade.
There are actually several brands of pressure-sensitive styli available for the iPad, including Adonit Jot Touch, Hex3 JaJa, and Wacom's own Intuos Creative Stylus, and even more on the way such as the Hex3 YuFu and Adobe/Adonit's Project Mighty, though it does appear that none these offers come close to devices with actual Wacom active layers built-in, as most of these pens are bluetooth hacks that attempt to make up for iPad's shortcomings. It's really a shame, though, since I find iPad's library of note-taking and drawing apps to be significant better in terms of quality and quantity than those found in Android's Play Store and Microsoft's Windows 8 Store.
Agreed, I owned the Asus VivoTab TF810c for about a year. It was close, but it was asked to do too much with too little. The processor power was pathetic, the emmc drive was too slow, and it frequently froze. These issues made it too unreliable to use day to day. In the end, I bought a MacBook Air and began typing my notes instead.
I have yet to have a really great writing or note taking experience on a tablet. It always feels laggy and just a bit off. Sure, it might work, but it does't have the right "feel".
Sadly, the best devices to do handwriting and notes seem to be the PDAs of old. Maybe they were worse so we didn't notice as much, I don't know. It just feels like we are in some kind of stylus uncanny valley.
* iPad mini retina
* Adonit Jot Pro (stylus)
* Adonit Jot Tote (A protective case, fitting with the smart cover, and holds the stylus)
* UPad for iPad (note taking app)
It's a setup small and light enough that I'm not worried about 'bulking' the small profile of the mini, but also solid enough I can throw it into my bag and haul it around without worrying about protecting it.
The note taking app allows for handwriting into a box that is then represented on the page (so I can write big and have it appear small and readable on-page).
I've been using this since each of the products was released and it would be extremely difficult to replace any part for me.
This product might be cheaper, but I would say the number one advantage of my setup is that at any time I can just use it 'as an ipad' and not a notetaking business device.