Is it better to take notes by hand or on a laptop?

The honest answer is that it depends on what the notes are for. Typed notes are fuller. Whether handwritten notes help you learn more is still disputed. The studies disagree, so a single rule would claim more than the evidence supports.

Laptop notes capture more of the lecture

In the studies we found, typed notes contain more of the lecture. A 2021 replication found that typed notes contained more words and more verbatim overlap with the lecture than handwritten notes, and the original study found the same ¹. If the goal is a complete record of what was said, the laptop wins on volume. The guide to writing speed compares the rates: the student mean for copying a passage was 22.85 words per minute ², while ordinary speech runs at 125 to 150 words per minute ³.

Fuller notes are not automatically better notes. The 2014 study below is about how the notes are written, not how many there are.

The 2014 study found a gap on conceptual questions

The best-known study on this question is Mueller and Oppenheimer's 2014 paper in Psychological Science. Across three studies, students who took notes on laptops performed worse on conceptual questions than students who took notes longhand ⁴.

The same authors also found that taking more notes can help ⁴. So the question is how the notes are written, not only how many are taken.

The 2019 replication did not repeat the conceptual gap

Morehead, Dunlosky and Rawson repeated the study in 2019. Their longhand group did better on factual questions ⁵. On conceptual questions, the two groups did not differ ⁶. So the conceptual gap did not repeat, and the replication found a factual advantage for longhand instead.

The 2021 meta-analysis found no significant effect

A 2021 replication and meta-analysis concluded that the effect of typing versus writing notes by hand was not statistically significant ⁷. Pooling several studies gives more weight than one experiment, which is why this result matters. Its limit is that the tests came soon after the lecture, so it does not show how notes help months later.

It depends on what the notes are for

• A complete record of a lecture, meeting or interview: type. The laptop captures more words ¹.
• Understanding a hard topic: handwriting may help if it makes you rephrase, but the evidence on that is contested, so do not rely on it.
• Reviewing for a test: summarize in your own words either way, since the 2014 authors placed the problem in how notes are written ⁴.
• Fast speakers: handwriting copies at about 22.85 words per minute ², far below ordinary speech at 125 to 150 words per minute ³, so you will miss material.

What to do

1. Pick the medium by goal. Type when you need a full record. Write by hand when you want to force yourself to summarize.
2. If you type, do not transcribe. Write fewer, shorter notes in your own words, and add a question or example for each point.
3. Rewrite after the session. Within a day, go over your notes and rewrite the main ideas. This step applies to both methods.
4. Test yourself. Close the notes and try to answer the questions you wrote.

If you are choosing between typing and handwriting for a different task, the question on whether typing is faster than handwriting covers copying speed. For a view of the trade-offs between typing and speaking, see when typing is better than dictation. The typing speed overview has the full picture of the subject.