Notion AI Review: Productivity Supercharged

Notion AI represents a different approach to AI productivity tools. Rather than being a standalone chatbot, it's deeply integrated into Notion's existing workspace, appearing exactly where you need it—in your notes, documents, databases, and project pages. After three months of daily use, I can say it's both more subtle and more useful than I initially expected.

What Notion AI Does

Notion AI activates with a simple Space key press or slash command. It can write, edit, summarize, translate, brainstorm, and answer questions—all within the context of your current page. The key differentiator is context awareness: Notion AI understands your page content, linked databases, and workspace structure.

Where Notion AI Shines

Meeting Notes and Summaries

This is Notion AI's killer use case. Paste raw meeting notes, and AI instantly extracts action items, key decisions, and follow-ups. For teams that live in Notion, this alone justifies the subscription. I've cut my post-meeting processing time by 70%.

First Draft Generation

Starting from a blank page is often the hardest part of writing. Notion AI excels at generating structured first drafts—blog outlines, project briefs, product specs, and documentation. The quality isn't final-draft ready, but it provides excellent scaffolding to build upon.

Database Intelligence

The Autofill feature for database properties is genuinely clever. Create a content calendar, and AI can suggest titles, estimate reading times, and generate summaries automatically. For content teams managing dozens of pieces, this is transformative.

Limitations

No Cross-Page Intelligence: Notion AI works on individual pages, not your entire workspace. It can't search across all your documents or connect insights from different areas. This limits its usefulness for knowledge management.

Simpler Than ChatGPT: For complex reasoning, multi-step analysis, or creative tasks, ChatGPT remains superior. Notion AI is optimized for quick, contextual assistance rather than deep conversations.

Quality Varies: Output quality depends heavily on context. With rich page content, it's excellent. On sparse pages, results can be generic and unhelpful.

Pricing

Notion AI costs $10/month per member (or $8/month billed annually), added to your existing Notion subscription. For teams already paying for Notion Plus or Business, this increases per-seat costs by 50-100%. For individuals on the free plan, it's a significant commitment.

The value proposition depends on usage patterns. Heavy writers and meeting-heavy teams will easily recoup the cost in time savings. Casual Notion users might find better value in a general-purpose AI like ChatGPT Plus.

Final Verdict

Notion AI is best understood as a quality-of-life upgrade rather than a revolutionary feature. It removes friction from tasks you were already doing in Notion—writing, organizing, summarizing. If Notion is central to your workflow, the AI add-on is easy to recommend.

For users who don't live in Notion, or who need more powerful AI capabilities, ChatGPT Plus offers more flexibility at the same price point. The best choice depends on where you do most of your work.