When comparing TheSans Mono vs Google Noto, the Slant community recommends TheSans Mono for most people. In the question“What are the best programming fonts?” TheSans Mono is ranked 41st while Google Noto is ranked 92nd.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Optimized for a large variety of displays
Glyph design on Noto Sans is well designed and accounts for HiDPI and standard displays.
Pro Open-source
Licensed and distributed under the SIL Open Font License.
Pro Retina-ready
Looks very clean and crisp on retina displays.
Pro Simple and yet beautiful
Simple and beautiful - much like the Windows counterparts such as Calibri and Arial but it's native for Linux and for this reason it looks better than these two with anti-aliasing.
Pro Expansive character set
Noto Sans is one of the most comprehensive fonts in the market, covering an estimated 30+ languages backed by Google.
Cons
Con Not a free font
This is not a free font. It doesn't either come free with any software. So this isn't very accessible. There are free downloads for the wide version and the Condensed version, but none for the SemiCondensed width, which is the medium width.
Con Lacks in Unicode coverage
This font doesn't cover WGL4, therefore it lacks a lot in Unicode coverage.
Con Font pack might be too large
Because it is so comprehensive, the TTF/OTF packages in ZIP is really large.