Have been using legacy for years as a paid user.. I did try the new version initially but it was unusable then and it still is now.
Why? If you're in software development like me, you know the new backend technology is based off of react/electron which is primarily used so that you only need to code one version across all platforms. It's a cost saving. Usability wise it's far, far slower and clunkier on mobile to use electron than it is to build apps natively, which is what legacy was. Any ideas about improvements on usability are ultimately a lie.. there's only so much you can do with a limiting tech stack. It's like having a bad engine in a car.. you can apply fancy paint to the body.. but it won't do you much good.
If anyone working at Evernote does read this, my advice as someone who has worked in product development (tech) successfully would be:
- Focus on actually finding out what users want, stop shipping random features. The basics of product development 101 - make sure what you're building is actually needed and useful. Avoid feature creep. Improve the core product first and foremost. Figure out what your moat is. Protect and improve it. Amazon, Google and Apple are all successful because they focused primarily on their core competency first - logistics, search engine, beautiful smartphones and laptops. Not because they added widgets or calenders or other side features to bloat their product.
- Compare legacy to the new version. I've timed how long it takes to open a note on the new version - between first opening Evernote and then loading a note - it takes close to ten seconds. Versus around 2 seconds previously. I use Evernote for life tracking and business - doing that 30+ times a day = a significant waste of time. Easily 5+ minutes a day waiting on notes to load.
- Compare legacy to the new version. The desktop app is fine, but on android the UI is clunky. Why does the home page need 50 widgets that no one wants? Just a list of the recently opened apps should be an option like before. Instead we get a widget that sort of does that, but badly. Whereas on one screen without scrolling I would previously see 7-8 recent notes listed vertically, I now see 2 and a half listed horizontally.
- Compare legacy to the new version. The readability on android for the legacy version was far better. Text wasn't weirdly spaced line to line, it was more compact, allowing you to focus more on the text. I mean look at it - the space between each line is almost as high as the text itself! That's an incredible waste of screen space, but again one I think that's imposed by electron and not the developers themselves. If it's not, it should be an easy fix. Both the line spacing (vertically), and the text as a result being smaller (needs to be made bigger) should be fixed.
To give credit, one positive of the new app is that it does allow you to change text colour in the app. Is that worth all the changes? No. Does the new version save the company a lot of money? Of course, multiple developers for each platform is expensive. But a faulty product is always more expensive in the long run. I have been a paid customer for years.. a long time.. but I will most likely look at cancelling. Luckily I like to declutter regularly and my note count is around 150, most of them information notes easily pasted over. I have been slowly making Notion my home over the last few years, with great success. True, it is equally slow due to running on the same tech stack (react/electron - which Evernote moved to to try and compete witn notion), but Notion's UI, hierarchal organisation and in-note features are from another planet compared to Evernote. The only thing keeping me on Evernote was the faster speed and the better readability on legacy, which I used for my day to day note editing.. but that's no longer there. A car with a good engine and fancy body paint is now just the fancy body point.. a shame. 10+ years but everything comes to a end at some point.
Actually side edit for anyone in a similar predicament - I will also use and have moved over notes to Google keep for my day to day notes that I access, since it's both fast and readable (no massive line spacing like current android Evernote). Only negative is it doesn't have colour formatting for text, but not a big deal.