Leaf&Core

Lamy Safari Note+ Review: Pencils vs Pens

Danielle from Leaf and Core
Reading Time: 8 minutes.

Lamy Safari Note Plus and Apple Pencil 2 togetherI keep a handwritten journal of my day-to-day adventures, thoughts, feelings, strifes, and so forth. It’s a meditative and contemplative task that forces me to reflect on my feelings around my situations, acknowledging and understanding them better. You slow down, you remember better, and you can practice meditative focus through the act of journaling. It’s wonderful for your health… usually. My hand always cramps up though. It was an issue for me in school as well, but I wrote far more back then. Now, most of my writing is, like this blog, digital. Even though I use my iPad for notes, I don’t write large blocks of text on my iPad with an Apple Pencil, I use a keyboard.

I went to find better pens. Rollerballs with smoother ink flows made an improvement, but it wasn’t enough. I heard about fountain pens, which require very little pressure to write and can help with the hand cramping issue. I bought one from one of my favorite pen manufacturers up to that point, Parker. I hated it. The flow was terrible, it wasn’t as comfortable to grip, and it turned me off them for a while.

Then came a new suggestion: Try the Lamy (stylized “LAMY”) Safari. This was a pen that has some infamy in the fountain pen enthusiast groups for being a fantastic—if not the best—beginner’s fountain pen. I tried it and instantly loved it. Comfortable, smooth flowing, great looks. My journal quickly became filled with primarily ink from my Lamy Safari.

Now, over to the iPad. I don’t like the Apple Pencil. It’s too slim, it’s slippery, it feels awful when writing on the surface of the iPad, especially without a screen protector. When I saw that Lamy, makers of my favorite pen, were now making a stylus for the iPad, I had to check it out. The Lamy Safari Note+ was here to replace my iPad’s Apple Pencil, and for only $70 at that. But could it live up to the promise of its namesake? Is this to iPad styluses as the Safari is to fountain pens?

I had to find out.

Specs vs Apple Pencil

It’s strange, the Note+ is heavier than the Apple Pencil, but, perhaps because of its larger size, it feels lighter.

Writing and Grip Feel

The first thing I noticed about this grip is that it was not shaped like my Safari. The idea is still there, but the top portion of the “pinch” area is much wider. This isn’t as comfortable to hold as a real Safari pen. However, it’s still far more comfortable to hold than an Apple Pencil. In fact, even with a Safari-style grip I got from Paperlike, it’s still more comfortable than my Apple Pencil. Though it feels cheaper, it does feel nicer to write with than the Apple Pencil.

The feel of the Note+ is matte, and that kind of soft touch matte that is slippery if your hands are dry. It doesn’t feel to be the same quality as the plastic used in real Safari pens, which often have glossy elements for better grip as well.

Lamy says their Note+ has a softer nib, to make for more quiet writing. This is true, it is quieter to write and draw with. The nib will wear down more quickly with time though, especially if you use a matte screen protector like the Paperlike. They do give you two replacement nibs in the box, along with the one that’s installed, so you’re set for some time, but know you may have to order nibs from Lamy or a distributor more often than you would for the Apple Pencil.

If you’re used to a Lamy Safari, a real one, that is, then you likely take the cap off and dock it on the back of the pen. You can’t do that with the Note+. For some reason, they decided to make the pen cap only dock on the front of the stylus. You just have to… put the cap somewhere? It’s such a weird decision. The cap could have added a bit more heft to the pen, making it feel more substantial in the hand as well.

The buttons, which you won’t be using much anyway, are completely flush with the body of the pen. This makes them hard to find by feel. If the “pinch” in the grip was more pronounced, this wouldn’t be an issue, you’d always be able to feel which way the pen is facing. However, with this, it’s far more hard to do so.

The Note+ was seemingly made in collaboration with Adonit, who makes other styluses for other devices, including Apple’s. When I was using it, I felt like Lamy might have found a company to make their stylus look more like a Safari. I don’t know the nature of their deal, but this certainly feels like a compromised design, something that was certainly not 100% on Lamy. But perhaps I’m giving my favorite pen company a little too much credit? The SDK is based on Adonit’s, it seems to stand to reason that the stylus itself may be Adonit internals, Lamy externals, though I do not have confirmation on that guess.

Looks

These days, Apple’s design philosophy is beige. Don’t break the mold, don’t challenge the status quo, just make it as boring and plain as possible. You can see that in the iPhone, which saves colors for non-pro models and continues to use the same basic design for multiple years running. Their Apple Watch has been virtually unchanged with the exception of the Ultra. Apple design today is set out to not be noticed, you know, like beige office equipment. Overtly minimalistic in 2024 is the beige of 1998. It’s just boring.

2024 needs an iMac.

To put it lightly, this looks better than the Apple Pencil. It stands out on a desk with the traditional Lamy shape. The single bent piece of metal for the clip, the flat side, the enlarged cap, it just stands out. Sure, the USB port on the back isn’t great. It would have been better to make this magnetically charge via the iPad’s wireless charging, like the Apple Pencil, but I don’t believe third parties have access to this. The Lamy also has a few colors, which let you liven up your workspace a little bit. Admittedly, red is the only vibrant color, but, still, it’s four times the colors Apple will offer!

I will say, however, that, upon closer inspection, various parts look a little cheap. Some color variation on the red model, such as black buttons or a black ring around the base to connect to the cap would have been a nice way to break it up a little. I love using a black nib on my Lamy Safari pens, the contrast breaks it up nicely, and I think this pen would have benefited from that. Still, this will look cooler than your Apple Pencil with a rubber grip on it on your desk.

Software and App Support

Up until now, the choice to pick the Lamy Safari Note+ over an Apple Pencil came down to comfort, looks, price, portability, and preference, all with the exception of portability leaning towards the Note+. However, there is one aspect that serves as a complete mood killer: software support. Apple locks this down, and uses it to kill any chance of competition, and it works.

Limited Software Support

The Apple Pencil has a double tap gesture, and the new Pro model has squeeze and tilt gestures. Minimally, at least one of these gestures is in use on just about every writing and drawing-centric apps. On a platform that is open and accepts competition, those gestures would just perform actions that other manufacturers could access their own way, similar to the way keyboards work. Instead, it’s proprietary, and app developers must make their apps specifically to work with third party APIs.

In the case of the Lamy Safari Note+, that’s almost no one. Popular apps like Notability and Procreate do not support it, with Notability’s AI support bot (ugh) claiming they have no plans to support it in the future.

There are a few apps that support the Note+ directly, listed on Lamy’s website, and those apps aren’t going to replace your note taking app or Procreate, Sketches Pro, or other pen-friendly apps. They’re minimal, in my testing.

Because of this limited support, you won’t have pressure sensitivity in other apps, no angle detection, limited palm rejection, and the buttons will do nothing. In nearly all apps, it’s basically just a pointer, a more refined and accurate version of your finger. This is Apple’s fault for not making their platform open, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’ll be able to do less with any third party stylus in comparison to the Apple Pencil.

Incomplete Support

I do wish they could sort of hack button support into the functionality. Have the buttons connect as a keyboard and send Command + Z for quick undo functionality, at the very least. However, hacking some weird backup, knowing Apple would likely break it in a future update, is a considerable effort that would likely be wasted. Getting people to support your SDK, however, is also incredibly difficult.

The other strange item is how they show battery life in their own app. Rather than a percentage, you see “normal” until your battery life is nearly depleted. Other apps that make use of the SDK can actually display a percentage, so this was a mind-boggling decision at Lamy. I can’t imagine why they’d want that. Yes, you can use the stylus while it’s charging via USB-C… but why on earth would you want to? Just give users the information they clearly want, don’t tease them with a battery life indicator that says, “You’re good,” right up until you’re not.

Overall

The Lamy Safari is my favorite pen. Inexpensive, reliable, comfortable to write with for long sessions, just a great pen. This, however, was a disappointment as soon as I realized how it was a Safari in name alone. It seems it may have been produced in some deal with Adonit, and it’s a shame Lamy couldn’t retain more creative control over it. This doesn’t really feel like a Safari. It looks like one, at least if you’re just glancing at it, but upon closer inspection, it’s a cheap copy, through and through.

The plastic and texture is a disappointment, the weight is light and unbalanced, the cap can’t attach to the back, and there’s next to no software support.

And yet, somehow, it still offers better ergonomics than that awful excuse for a writing instrument Apple made.

I wanted to love this so much. The Apple Pencil is terrible. It’s an ergonomic nightmare that requires bulky grips to fix, the double tap functionality is hit or miss, depending on the grip you’re using, but it otherwise is exactly what you’re looking for, fast access to your tools. On newer devices, being able to see where you’ll draw before you do, or the type of tool you’ll draw with, is a nice feature.

The Apple Pencil isn’t great. They have software support in every app because Apple made it easy to build support for their own Pencil in their own OS. They made it impossible for anyone to compete with them. Apple is clearly making the experience for other styluses worse intentionally, giving themselves an unfair monopoly, but we can’t do much except complain about it until regulators step in and put a stop to Apple’s constant monopolistic behavior.

If the Safari Note+ had the same software support as the Apple Pencil, this would be a tough comparison. Out of the box, the Safari Note+ has better ergonomics and better looks. But that cheap feeling plastic, cap, and texture do pull it down. It also lacks magnets, and cannot attach to your iPad, so it’s easier to lose, even if it can’t roll off a table like an Apple Pencil. I’d love a decent competitor to the Apple Pencil. I’d love for it to feel exactly like the real Safari fountain pen. This isn’t it.

If you want my real advice, buy a nice notebook and a Lamy Safari, Vista, or AL-Star pen instead. You can actually get a nice notebook and Safari for less than the Note+. If you do, you’ll understand why I’m so disappointed in this stylus. It’ll ruin you for this stylus. But for writing on the iPad? We’re stuck with the Apple Pencil.

I hope Lamy doesn’t give up on the Note+. A nicer pen-style stylus, more like their Safari, and with better software support, would be a great replacement to the Apple Pencil. Maybe one day, Apple will let third parties actually compete on their platform, but I can’t see that happening without regulation forcing them to open their platforms up. So far, anti-monopoly laws have only seen enforcement in Europe when it comes to Apple, so we may be out of luck in the U.S. for a long time.

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