Roam Research vs Obsidian
With the exciting rise of bi-directional linking in the note taking space, it has completely transformed the way we take notes. And of course, with every new shiny product, the question everyone wants to know, which one should you use? As a disclaimer, I use and enjoy both!
Let’s start with the similarities. Roam and Obsidian both use bi-directional links as a fundamental building block which can provide context between notes. These notes can then be represented visually as nodes to form a knowledge graph, essentially creating a second brain.
But what sets these two apart asides from pricing and features (e.g. online vs offline, markdown, etc)?
Optimization
The biggest difference between the two is what they’re designed to optimize for. Using Notion as a benchmark for optimization, Notion optimizes for curation and organization, while Roam optimizes for creation and ideation. Obsidian is in that sweet spot in the middle.
In this sense, Roam is more opinionated than Obsidian. When you open Roam, it greets you with a blank daily notes page. It operates under the idea that the only thing that’s really constant in your notes, is time. The interface encourages you to write, letting Roam handle the organization for you in a way for you to see how your ideas have evolved over time. This effect can also be achieved with Obsidian but instead, it’s an option you need to enable.
Notes in Roam aren’t constrained to a specific hierarchy and is akin to a digital version of a messy desk. Interestingly enough, messiness has been found to promote creativity! What Roam does well is organizing that mess for you. In Obsidian you might feel inclined to think more organization before writing. This is because the file explorer is visible by default and can become unwieldy as your notes grow. If the work you’re doing is generally structured or linear such as documentation or coursework, Obsidian may be superior in this regard.
Customization
Roam is described as “low floor, high ceiling” and has hidden away a lot of the complexities for us, unless we want to look for them. This abstraction makes it a lot easier to get started, whereas with Obsidian there’s initially a lot more friction.
Depending on the type of personality you have, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Personally, I think that a lot of developers may gravitate towards Obsidian as it provides more granular control. Roam constrains you to the main pane and the sidebar. But with Obsidian you can decide how many panes you want open, align them however you want and write your own extensions as Obsidian’s written in plain javascript. Plus, some setups are just :chefs-kiss:
Customizing in Roam is a bit more round-about and involves using more advanced features but can definitely give Obsidian a run for its money.
Product Vision
Roam’s long term goal is to provide a platform for collaborative knowledge building with other people, or your past and future self. Fundamentally, this means that it will be an online service. It’s a grand goal, but honestly I’m having a fun time tracking daily tasks like what I’m reading, eating and how my sleep quality is.
Obsidian has more of a focus on providing an environment for slower and more deliberate notes, letting you design your own workflow. It’s inspired by IDE’s like VSCode. For non-programmers, just think of a supercharged text editor that does a lot of the magic for you such as auto-complete, custom hotkeys.
Which one should you use?
Having used both extensively for the past couple of months, I can honestly say they’re both a joy to use and it really depends on what you want to prioritize. I’m currently doing most of my initial writing/fleshing out in Roam and then transferring to Obsidian with the final result. This way my Obsidian database has less “noise” when searching and acts a more refined database.
If you’re using both, I’d love to know what your workflow is like. Or if you’ve used either Roam or Obsidian and had a preference for one, I’d be curious to hear why!
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