Kickstarter has given birth to many styluses last year and Hand was one of the most successful ones bagging $313,490 from their original $25,000 goal. Created by Steve King, this stylus is inspired by the design of the mechanical pen and pencils. Featuring one of the smallest tips at 4mm diameters, it does look and feel great and the retracting pen is a nice touch although not necessary. It comes with an optional pack of 6 back up nibs all nicely presented in beautifully aluminium cases.

Unfortunately Hand doesn’t perform as good as it looks and its main feature remains the design. The smaller tip means you need to press it harder on the screen to register, something that becomes rather tiring especially when you are drawing. The body made of anodized aluminium is durable enough but the nib tends to wear out easily feeling a little dry explaining the need for the additional ones! So if you are planning to get one you should get the nip pack too. I wish they had been more careful with the design of the nib as there’s no point making it smaller since it’s not possible to obtain more accuracy. Wacom’s Bamboo Stylus has the best size with 6 mm and the majority has 8mm in dime meter to ensure an easy and effortless interaction with the screen. I’m hoping they’ll improve it in the next generation as Hand has one of the best designs out there. Let’s see it in action!:

Lunatik, the creators of the stylish ipad nano watch TikTok, proposed the idea of a Pen/Syulus for ipad in KickStarter back in December 2011, and after a long period of seven months they finally delivered the product. What attracted me to the project was their design and pervious successful work, so amongst many other similar products I decided to go with them. I’m used to Wacom Bamboo stylus which has a soft tip so the first impression of “Touch Pen” stylus functionality wasn’t very good. The pen however felt great, very smooth and comfortable to hold.

After a little more playing around and testing the pen and getting used to the harder tip, it started to feel more natural and it performed quiet well in paper. The Stylus works the best when held at 90 degrees and at other angles sometimes, although not very often, it doesn’t register. What’s really interesting and pleasing is the accuracy. Although no rubber tip stylus can be 100% accurate or anything even close!, Touch Pen is doing a very good job at initiating the lines from the centre of the pen (depending on the app – some apps offsets the touch for fingers e.g. Paper is a good app to try this on) meaning you can easily join lines together. See it in action in the video below:

I have to admit, the more I’m using this the more I’m liking it!

iPad has been increasingly entering our digital lives and although it was never designed to replace personal computers and laptops, for many people it is becoming their only digital hub. One of the areas where Apple is yet to dictate the way we record our thoughts and ideas is writing. As much as using fingers is convenient for basic navigation, web browsing or re-touching photos, when it comes to writing or drawing it just doesn’t feel right. This is where a lot of third party companies have been taking advantage of and created a new market for iPad’s styluses. The limitations caused by the technology used in making iPad’s touch screen have pushed these products to be experimental and try different approaches. There are many styluses available in the market today each offering a slightly different experience, but which one is the right choice for you?

Griffin

Griffin was amongst the first styluses in the market that offered something practical. Balanced in size and design, it’s a good choice for people looking for something simple and fairly cheap.

Just Mobile AluPen

Just Mobile AluPen briefly enjoyed its popularity after the release due to its interesting design, however, the competitors offering more pen like designs were ultimately wining this race! The pen has a nice weight to it and overall provides a pleasant experience if you are not going to use it consistency over long hours.

Wacom Bamboo

Bamboo is Wacom’s entry into the capacitive screen’s stylus market and as expected from a company specialized in designing tablet and stylus; it seems to be the best option amongst the rubber tip choices. The tip is slightly smaller than the other models which makes writing easier, but it needs slightly more pressure for it to register on the screen as it’s softer. Also the tip is replaceable which makes this a more durable stylus. Wacom has also released its own app “Bamboo Paper” for this stylus. It’s a very responsive app with nice smooth ink effect. The only design flaw is the pop up colour and pen size window that shows up sometimes when drawing.

Adonit Jot

Jot by adonit is a recent addition which uses a different method by using a plastic desk (precision disk) on the top that allows you to see what you write. This means unlike other styluses where it’s very difficult if not impossible to connect your lines together, with Jot you can do precise writing. This is not exactly an invention as DAGI has a similar product. The pen is designed beautifully and comes in two models; basic and pro. There’s also an app being developed for it. The main issue with Jot is the disk that wears off after a while and need to be replaced. Also it doesn’t work with some of screen protectors.

Nomad Brush

Nomad brush is designed for drawing with artists’ desire to use a more traditional tool to interact with their iPad in mind. It feels like a real brush and is great for loose drawings. It’s not designed to be very precise and it’s not, but very sensitive requiring minimum amount of pressure and works great for painting or colouring your drawings. I’m yet to see how durable the tip is, it started to loosen up just a little after a few weeks of use and hasn’t changed ever since.

Aiptek MyNote Pen

MyNote Pen by Aiptek is one of the products of a new wave started by Byzero. It’s an ultrasonic device and uses a transmitter on the pen (pen needs 2x SR41 batteries included in the package) and a receiver (uses iPad as power source) attached to iPad. It’s by far the most innovative way to handle writings on iPad. You need to calibrate the pen first which is a very important step and you need to make sure you are resting your palm on the screen and holding the pen the way you would when writing. It’s not 100% accurate and there’s a few pixels offset which gets worse towards the end and edges of the screen, but with a little practise and getting used to the device, it’s very usable. There’s a little dot on the screen showing where the tracked pen is which helps you re-adjust holding position. The pen needs to be pushed in a little, it makes clicking sounds similar to ball point pen supposedly activating the transmitter, it was better if the tip was more sensitive. It comes with two hard and soft tips and the only different between them is the soft tip is a bit longer.
At the moment it’s only supported by one app; Studio Basic lite and only works in vertical position. The app is overall ok but limited to one page only per notebook and has stability issues causing it to crash from time to time. The good news is soon the support will come to other apps such as Notes Plus, Pro create and NoteShelf.

To get a better feel for MyNote’s performance have a look at the test video below;

See more:
Jot Mini, Lunatik Touch Pen

I don’t really have drawing skills but I do enjoy the occasional doodling! First time when I tried to draw something on iphone I didn’t like it much! it was interesting to use your finger but I couldn’t really see what I was doing and being so used to pen as I guess we all are didn’t make it a very memorable experiment!
Recently we got a stylus that unlike the other mediocre models on the market, is actually pretty good! it’s AluPen by JustMobile and it made drawing on iphone fun for me! of course since the iphone’s screen wasn’t designed for the use with stylus, this is not highly accurate, but it does work!

I’ve used Sketchbook pro and Brushes to draw these