Here's my take from the perspective of someone who has used the iPad Pro and multiple windows note taking devices that all use pens (surface pro, surface book, lenovo thinkpad devices). Reposting/modifying this from a response I typed out in the DO thread.
a)The iPad Pro definitely works and the pen works great. This seems to be one of the crowd favorites on SDN. Only problem is that you have to jump through lots of hoops in my opinion to get the same stuff done that can ordinarily be zoomed through with ease on a full fledged laptop. The file management system is garbage. The lack of a mouse also makes things really difficult and the issue of having to upload things to a cloud storage service also complicates matters. CANNOT fully replace a laptop. The battery life is clutch though (a little over 10 hrs with some prudence). Not all apps support split screen. You need some kind of google drive/box/Wifi thing going to shuttle documents between devices.
b)Surface devices are excellent although the battery life of the surface pro is 2-3 hrs below that of the Ipad Pro (about 7-8 hrs which is not terrible). The pen of the surface pro (NTrig) is probably about as good as the ipad pro's pencil but I do prefer the pencil on the ipad if the body was not "so slimy" along with the weird charging mechanism. This is a full fledged computer with enough ports, an excellent/native file management system, and the ability to use a mouse. You do not need cloud storage here. The surface book works just like the surface pro albeit with a better screen and ridiculously good battery life (about 13-15 hrs when I actually used it). The surface book is expensive and the build quality is better than that of the recent (2016/2017) Macbook Pros IMO which now have garbage keyboards and no "real" USB ports compared to the ones made before 2016. I would buy the Surface Book 2 over the 2016/2017 Macbook Pros without question. The SB2 (objectively not emotionally) has a better screen, better keyboard with good travel, PORTS, and a powerful processor with a 6 GB dedicated GPU that actually games really well. You do not need dongles, it has a touch screen (vs the less useful touch bar), and it has a pen that on the SB2 screen specifically works as well as the Apple pencil on an iPad Pro screen. If you are thinking of getting an iPad Pro and a Macbook Pro, save yourself some money and just buy the second (not first) iteration of the Surface book.
c)Other devices to consider include other Ntrig devices, WACOM AES devices like the Thinkpad Yoga 720 (do a google search, there's more AES devices), and then Wacom EMR devices (these exist but they are fewer than most other types of device enabled pens).
IMO pen ratings (and trust me, I have used all) go as follows from best to worst;
Wacom EMR (gold standard, first line, uses no battery, writes like butter, it is the one pen type that I have used for about 7 years and still love it, closest to a natural pen experience).
Ipad Pro Pencil
Wacom AES with a very slight almost imperceptible advantage over Ntrig.
Others (Atmel, Synaptics). These are generally garbage.
The WACOM EMR technology is what is employed in some (not all) of the Samsung S Pens and the old Lenovo's (x230 which can be found for peanuts/$200 or so on ebay and form excellent note taking machines, early thinkpad yogas, etc). They are also used in the Wacom Bamboo graphics tablets. Newer devices that use this technology include the HP Zbook X2 (super expensive but the screen is one of the best you'll ever see on a laptop, including the 4K XPS 15 screen), the Fujitsu T9xx series, Samsung Notebook 9 Pro, the Samsung galaxy book 12, and the Toshiba Portege z20t. There's more but these are the ones that immediately come to mind.
My recommendation will be to keep your current laptop if you have one and just buy a used x230T (which are reasonably powerful laptops) on ebay with SSDs for < $350 and use this as your note taking machine instead of the fancy but much less useful ipad pro. Make sure you set up everything to sync perfectly to the cloud in Onenote. You can then buy another laptop or just use the x230 as your primary machine (which I did for years). The keyboard on the x230T is the best I have ever used on a laptop with the exception of the old IBM thinkpad keyboards. You will definitely get a lot more use from this compared to an iPad pro keyboard which is just not smart to say the least. People for some reason seem to be forgetting the joys of being able to use SD cards and USB drives with ease without having to rely solely on having some "cloud based" storage system. The x230T is also a very durable laptop that can last for years if bought in a reasonably used/new condition and cared for.
I used WACOM EMR devices throughout med school (x230 T and an old x61T I have had for about 5 years) and would do the same thing again without reservation.
a)The iPad Pro definitely works and the pen works great. This seems to be one of the crowd favorites on SDN. Only problem is that you have to jump through lots of hoops in my opinion to get the same stuff done that can ordinarily be zoomed through with ease on a full fledged laptop. The file management system is garbage. The lack of a mouse also makes things really difficult and the issue of having to upload things to a cloud storage service also complicates matters. CANNOT fully replace a laptop. The battery life is clutch though (a little over 10 hrs with some prudence). Not all apps support split screen. You need some kind of google drive/box/Wifi thing going to shuttle documents between devices.
b)Surface devices are excellent although the battery life of the surface pro is 2-3 hrs below that of the Ipad Pro (about 7-8 hrs which is not terrible). The pen of the surface pro (NTrig) is probably about as good as the ipad pro's pencil but I do prefer the pencil on the ipad if the body was not "so slimy" along with the weird charging mechanism. This is a full fledged computer with enough ports, an excellent/native file management system, and the ability to use a mouse. You do not need cloud storage here. The surface book works just like the surface pro albeit with a better screen and ridiculously good battery life (about 13-15 hrs when I actually used it). The surface book is expensive and the build quality is better than that of the recent (2016/2017) Macbook Pros IMO which now have garbage keyboards and no "real" USB ports compared to the ones made before 2016. I would buy the Surface Book 2 over the 2016/2017 Macbook Pros without question. The SB2 (objectively not emotionally) has a better screen, better keyboard with good travel, PORTS, and a powerful processor with a 6 GB dedicated GPU that actually games really well. You do not need dongles, it has a touch screen (vs the less useful touch bar), and it has a pen that on the SB2 screen specifically works as well as the Apple pencil on an iPad Pro screen. If you are thinking of getting an iPad Pro and a Macbook Pro, save yourself some money and just buy the second (not first) iteration of the Surface book.
c)Other devices to consider include other Ntrig devices, WACOM AES devices like the Thinkpad Yoga 720 (do a google search, there's more AES devices), and then Wacom EMR devices (these exist but they are fewer than most other types of device enabled pens).
IMO pen ratings (and trust me, I have used all) go as follows from best to worst;
Wacom EMR (gold standard, first line, uses no battery, writes like butter, it is the one pen type that I have used for about 7 years and still love it, closest to a natural pen experience).
Ipad Pro Pencil
Wacom AES with a very slight almost imperceptible advantage over Ntrig.
Others (Atmel, Synaptics). These are generally garbage.
The WACOM EMR technology is what is employed in some (not all) of the Samsung S Pens and the old Lenovo's (x230 which can be found for peanuts/$200 or so on ebay and form excellent note taking machines, early thinkpad yogas, etc). They are also used in the Wacom Bamboo graphics tablets. Newer devices that use this technology include the HP Zbook X2 (super expensive but the screen is one of the best you'll ever see on a laptop, including the 4K XPS 15 screen), the Fujitsu T9xx series, Samsung Notebook 9 Pro, the Samsung galaxy book 12, and the Toshiba Portege z20t. There's more but these are the ones that immediately come to mind.
My recommendation will be to keep your current laptop if you have one and just buy a used x230T (which are reasonably powerful laptops) on ebay with SSDs for < $350 and use this as your note taking machine instead of the fancy but much less useful ipad pro. Make sure you set up everything to sync perfectly to the cloud in Onenote. You can then buy another laptop or just use the x230 as your primary machine (which I did for years). The keyboard on the x230T is the best I have ever used on a laptop with the exception of the old IBM thinkpad keyboards. You will definitely get a lot more use from this compared to an iPad pro keyboard which is just not smart to say the least. People for some reason seem to be forgetting the joys of being able to use SD cards and USB drives with ease without having to rely solely on having some "cloud based" storage system. The x230T is also a very durable laptop that can last for years if bought in a reasonably used/new condition and cared for.
I used WACOM EMR devices throughout med school (x230 T and an old x61T I have had for about 5 years) and would do the same thing again without reservation.
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