Roam Pros

Roam is a brand with many supporters who enjoy the bullet-point note-taking format and bidirectional linking, especially the graph overview that showcases all their ideas and how they relate to each other. They were the first to bring bi-directional linking to the online note-taking scene. They have integrated some coding requirements in order to more effectively customize your notes, and users find it helpful for personal knowledge management that they don’t have to worry about stopping in the middle of their train of thought to change formatting.

Roam also has an interesting and unique feature known as block referencing; using double brackets, you can link to a block of text elsewhere on your note or a different note, avoiding duplicate content and optimizing your notes. This block can appear as a link (which you can jump to or open in the sidebar), an embed that is directly editable, or even a duplicate (which you can edit without affecting the original block). 

There is a desktop app for Roam and it has an offline mode allowing you to edit notes on the go without a wifi connection. They have a mobile app for Apple and Android, though users overwhelmingly prefer to work on desktop or tablet. It has a diagram feature that works just like a Scrintal board, as well as the ability to calculate basic formulas like an Excel file due to its basis in coding.

Scrintal Pros

The structure and flow of Scrintal lends itself to an intuitive process from beginning to end: plan, brainstorm, execute, and share. This method of work makes the journey from ideation to presentation smooth and prevents interruptions to the creative thought process due to formatting, organization, or tab switching.

Empowering your first brain

Scrintal’s virtual canvas ensures the steady flow of creativity without interruptions. Connections rise to the surface more easily in a visual format and are not at risk of being forgotten or overlooked. The Scrintal ecosystem can host videos and PDFs on the same screen as an editable note, avoiding the need to scroll up and down or switch back and forth between tabs or windows. Your research and writing can take place in the same environment.

As needed, notes can appear as docs, full-screen text editors (for focusing), or titles only (for a holistic view of the network). This is a tool for the mind to more effectively engage with information and produce new ideas, as well as determine whether any information is missing or lacking.

Networked note taking

Docs can be linked together or tagged, and these are two of Scrintal’s most important features. Our minds work similarly, forming connections between ideas and using these connections to create a knowledge base that not only consists of information, but also a network that inspires innovation and enables problem-solving. Creating a visual representation of this network, whether hierarchical or more flexible, is more efficient than holding it in your mind, where only one connection can be considered at a time and new ideas may be lost or forgotten.

In Roam, the connections between notes can be solidified through links and tags and visually viewed on the graphical database; but you cannot permanently alter the visual graphs. If you move a dot out of place, go to a note, and then return to the graph, the dot will have been replaced in its original position. In Scrintal, you can use boards to keep placements of docs consistent and ensure mind maps are organized in whichever way makes sense to you.

Roam Cons

In Roam, connections and links are not represented visually the way they are in Scrintal; while visual links between notes exist and can be viewed, these links cannot be altered on the graph to suit each user, making them difficult to parse and navigate. For some, Scrintal’s board system is more intuitive.

Roam is a great tool for people looking to build a large knowledge base of ideas that will inevitably be linked somewhere else on the graphical map, especially if visuality is less important and more of an abstract tool to show the interconnectedness of ideas without needing to interact with these connections in a holistic way. If you don’t mind a little coding and prefer a bullet-point note-taking system, it can be a great tool. But it is not too dissimilar from similar note-taking apps that have a one-note-at-a-time approach, with only two notes that can be opened at one time and only if they are linked together. 

Embedding media is more difficult to learn in Roam, and there are many tools that exist on both platforms but are easier to use in Scrintal. For example, columns in Scrintal and kanban boards in Roam function like Trello boards, with tasks that can be moved along to indicate stages of completion; but in Roam, the user needs to type a bullet-pointed list with many indents to populate the kanban board with tasks, while in Scrintal you can use Blocks to create Kanban boards and add new docs within it with a click (and you can move it around your board or desk as needed so you have room to work on other things).

Scrintal Cons

Scrintal is an early stage product, so there are more areas for improvement compared to Roam (which has been around for many years). The Scrintal team implements community feedback in product updates. 

For example, the ability to annotate PDFs is a hugely important feature for research and note-taking purposes, and this functionality is not yet available in Scrintal (or Roam). Within Scrintal, you can collaborate directly on boards or on a single doc, but content in Roam may be more suitable for simple copy-and-paste publishing. Collaboration tools on Roam in many cases rely on integration with other apps. Integrations with a wide range of other apps like calendars, meeting platforms, and others that are used by knowledge workers on a daily basis are still being developed for Scrintal. A mobile app is in the works in order to provide a competitive experience with other note-taking apps and be a more commensurate alternative to Roam.

For now, some users may find they are best served using Roam and Scrintal together, especially since both rely on bi-directional linking.