When comparing Mobisle Notes vs Roam Research, the Slant community recommends Mobisle Notes for most people. In the question“What is the best cross-platform note-taking app?” Mobisle Notes is ranked 25th while Roam Research is ranked 27th. The most important reason people chose Mobisle Notes is:
Mobisle Notes does not overwhelm the user with options like due-dates and prioritization like other apps do. It doesn't clutter the screen with buttons that are never used. The basic interface is just a plain and simple notepad. Android lacks a default notepad app. Of all the basic notepad apps on Android, Mobisle Notes is the most beautiful, and the perfect fill-in for anyone looking for something similar to the iPhone's default notepad app.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Clean, user-friendly, stylish interface
Mobisle Notes does not overwhelm the user with options like due-dates and prioritization like other apps do. It doesn't clutter the screen with buttons that are never used. The basic interface is just a plain and simple notepad.
Android lacks a default notepad app. Of all the basic notepad apps on Android, Mobisle Notes is the most beautiful, and the perfect fill-in for anyone looking for something similar to the iPhone's default notepad app.
Pro Checklists
The most common use for a notepad app is as a quick checklist. Mobisle Notes lets you switch to checklist mode with a button press, so you can easily mark things as done, rather than having to delete all the text.
Pro In place page creation / linking with brackets or hashtags
Pro Rename a page and all everything that references it renames as well
No broken links!
Pro Each bullet point can be either linked to, or included in full in any page (including the page it originated on. Yay transclusion!)
Pro Shift click on a link pulls up the link in a side panel without navigating you away
Pro Each bullet point on a page is zoomable as it's own 'wiki page'
Pro Helpful slash (/) commands while editing for autocomplete, TODOs and more
Pro Easy page merging.
Pro Explicit linked references included on every page at the bottom
Pro Supports markdown
Pro Bi-directional links
Pro Graph overview allows you to easily see how nodes relate
Pro Supports in place datalog queries
Pro In place editing
Pro Supports hiccup syntax for HTML snippets
Pro A default place for "Daily Notes" means not having to worry where a new note *should* go.
Cons
Con Major limitations for free users
Free users are not able to share their notes via direct URL, they cannot sync notes over devices, and they have to deal with ads at the bottom of every note.
Con No mobile app
You can port Roam to Hermit, but there is no offline capacity.
Con No established pricing model, this could get expensive later
Rumored to be upwards of $30/month
Con No offline mode
The information can be accessed on the browser offline, but you cannot edit it.
Con Very expensive pricing model, no 'free' tier
For what still feels like beta-software, it's pricing model is very expensive in comparison with competitors that generally offer free tiers for example.
Con Forces you to edit with markdown, rather than wysiwyg
This issue is made worse by super basic formatting bugs, like if you want to for example unbold some text with control/cmd-b, it rather double-bolds it (e.g. it becomes bolded text), making the non-wysiwygness even more messy.