Pencil Pro + Handwriting recognition - is it really this bad?

I just got a new ipad air and a pencil pro. I assumed that like most things AI related, handwriting recognition would be passable. It's abysmally bad and there doesn't appear to be a global function to make it better? And on top of that, the shortcuts for converting writing to text in most apps are awkward and require multiple steps. I feel like I was badly ripped off. What am I missing? Is there some way to improve this? I tried Nebo but the UI is terrible. Feel like I need to go back to a moleskin - hopefully this is something Apple is working to improve, both in terms of the quality of text conversion and also usability?