Modern Tech: Digital Styluses and Pens

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Modern Tech: Digital Stylus

Stylus, a tool for making marks, for writing. First used in Mesopotamian in conjunction with clay to create cuneiform. A simple writing system of wedge shaped marks.

The word stylus comes from the latin word stilus; meaning a stake or pointed instrument tapering to a fine point used for writing upon tablets. Traditionally these tablets were made from wax or clay.

Today we have a large selection of ranging from tools still used with clay, to the most detailed fine tip digital pens. Modern styluses are used with touchscreen tablets, design tables (such as Wacom) and many smartphones. Some smartphones now have proprietary styluses that are made and sold with them. Today they are making a comeback. No longer the stubby, rubbery and clumsy. As the technology advances, todays new digital pens are precise and able to replicate the detail we want and expect from a ball-point pen.

In today’s vocabulary the term stylus tends to mean a tool used to input data into a PDA, graphics tablet, touch screen pc, touchscreen devises and UMPC’s.

There are some really great styluses currently for sale and I have a few I want to showcase.

jot touch pro stylus — The Adonit Jot Touch aluminum bluetooth digital stylus.

Top of my list is the Adonit Jot Touch. Love this, in fact I own it. Made from aluminum, it has a good weight and feels pretty natural in your hand. The battery is rechargeable and gives you about a month of moderate use. Since it connects to your tablet via bluetooth 4.0 (which also creates palm rejection), neither its battery or your tablet’s will suffer much drain. The part that I really love is the super fine metal tip and gliding disk. It is so precise and a joy to draw and write with. Added bonus, it’s pressure sensitive so you can control how the line looks same as you would with a regular pen or pencil. Only drawback is that it currently only works for a select few devices and you have to be using an app that was designed to be compatible with the stylus.

Pencil is a slightly newer product and the company 53 is also fairly new to the tablet accessory world. Like the Touch Pro it was designed to feel natural in your hand, it offers palm rejection, built in digital eraser, bluetooth connection, and USB rechargeable battery.

Bamboo Feel, produced by Wacom and one of a line of Bamboo products, this stylus has the option interchangeable pen tips so you can customize your experience. Bamboo Feel is made along the same dimensions as a ballpoint pen, clip included. But this pen has a very specific list of products that it works with as it is only compatible if the tablet (or other touchscreen device) is running Wacoms feel IT technology.