Having tried Evernotes own handwriting features, S-Note, Papyrus and LectureNotes I am now stuck between LectureNotes and Papyrus. I've purchased both and I keep wanting to go to Papyrus because it's interface is just cleaner but LectureNotes has a lot more features, its just clunky for me to be diving into menus to get to them.
In terms of the differences lets see.
S-Note - works well on the device itself and now syncs with Evernote but IMO thats about as far as it goes. If you need to be able to utilize those notes on other devices like a computer or print them then issues regarding working with the proprietary format are bound to come up. Export to PDF is supported but only to local storage, whereas export to Google Drive goes immediately to a proprietary .spd file that only S-Note can read. Working with the S-Notes files that are exported in PDF format requires you to manage the files yourself and once you bring the PDFs into your computer the format of the pages is weird (they're not standard paper sizes). On top of all this the syncing with Evernote really is clunky in the sense that what you see in Evernote on your PC is a lower resolution image representation of the pages of your notes.
Papyrus - works similar to S-Note in allowing you to work with objects and take notes with various pen styles. Expands upon the page setup to include various paper sizes. Adds cloud support with automatic backup to Box or Dropbox at set intervals (the interval options suck, the most frequent auto export frequency is every 12-hours so if you need to copy a PDF of your notes to your computer quickly you'll have to manually export or dive into the settings menu and force an auto backup to the cloud).
LectureNotes - builds upon the features of Papyrus by adding more customizations. There's far too many to list, I suggest tyring out the trial and seeing for yourself. One neat feature that others do not have is layer support for having up to 3 maximum layers which makes it easy to move objects around if you plan ahead while you're taking notes. Layers are important when pasting in screen captures and images because once pasted into your note these objects don't behave the same way they do in S-Note or Papyrus. In order to manipulate them you must use the marquee tool so being able to isolate them on a different layer is going to save a lot of frustration when trying to manipulate pasted images later as one fine tunes their notes. LectureNotes doesn't natively auto save to any cloud services so one would have to set up another application to assist in that. I believe Dropsync should work fine though and thats where i'll be headed with LectureNotes. LectureNotes does allow you to select where files are saved which will help in setting up a workflow that works for me. Until I setup a 3rd party application to handle my file management what I'm doing is exporting to PDF and sharing those PDF files to Dropbox manually.
Hope this helps.
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