I am just starting to use it, so I will report and get back to you. One benefit that Bear has vs. Apple Notes is strong support for Apple Shortcuts — so the amount of time you might waste setting up the internal links between notes (especially the daily ones) is reduced to minutes if you use shortcuts like the ones described here.
Bear's search functionality is documented here. It's powerful, if you can remember / master the syntax.
Bear only costs money if you want to sync between devices (plus some extra features like certain export format). Depending on your usage, you might not need to worry about it. They do offer a free trial.
For the features that Forever Notes depends on, the biggest differences between Bear & Apple Notes (besides the Shortcuts support):
- Bear doesn't have a folders concept (which is fine, because FN doesn't rely on them in Apple Notes). Just mentioning that as a big architectural difference for those interested in exploring the former.
- Bear supports nested tags, which opens up a range of possibilities compared to Apple Notes (which are a flat tag structure)
- Apple Notes supports Smart Folders, which FN uses to auto-build hubs like Projects. Since Bear doesn't have folders, so you'd have to either manually-maintain a hub like Projects, or build an Apple Shortcut that could rebuild the hub pages on-demand (ex: as part of an automation, quarterly spring cleaning, etc.). Not ideal, but workable.
