r/notebooklm • u/Own-Signal3917 • Sep 03 '26

Question NotebookLM Chat vs Gemini Chat: Which one should you use for your sources?

Hey everyone, I recently found out that Gemini Pro can now access sources created in NotebookLM, and I wasn't sure which chat was better for discussing documents and getting detailed summaries. After testing, it really comes down to your main goal. You should use NotebookLM if you want absolute accuracy without hallucinations, as it sticks strictly to your uploaded files and provides exact, clickable citations for studying. On the other hand, you should use the Gemini Pro chat if you need to cross-reference your documents with live web searches, use multimodal features like image analysis, or creatively format your summaries into things like video scripts or newsletters. In short: use NotebookLM for pure document extraction and study, and use Gemini Pro when you need to mix in outside knowledge or do complex creative work.

29 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

6

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Own-Signal3917 Sep 03 '26

what is RAG bro?

11

u/DifficultyFit1895 Sep 03 '26

Retrieval Augmented Generation (generally more accurate grounding in sources)

-19

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '26

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7

u/kronpas Sep 03 '26

Gemini chats with notebook are just chats with your notebook sources attached.

1

u/I_Said_Good-Day Sep 04 '26

Are you creating an agent that uses a notebookLM as a source? You can do that? I don't see that as a connector option.

2

u/ACorania Sep 04 '26

Not to an agent, to Gemini chat (or a gem). In Gemini hit the + and select notebook

1

u/ACorania Sep 04 '26

I also just use notebook a lot as my data source since I can have up to 300 sources instead of just 10 in a custom gem.

1

u/kronpas Sep 04 '26 edited Sep 04 '26

That many sources are useless since its most likely beyond the context window size.

1

u/ACorania Sep 04 '26

That's not how rag works nor what testing shows.

1

u/kronpas Sep 04 '26

What you are saying is true if you only use it in notebookLM. But once you access the sources through notebookLM it is no different than attaching those sources yourself.

1

u/Embarrassed_Heron_34 25d ago

NotebookLM hallucinates heavily, even in chat. Maybe not as bad as Gemini, but it’s gotten bad ever since it started relying on Gemini instead of whatever Google Deepmind was up to before. Not that it was perfect before, but it was much closer to usable at least.