Apple Pencil Alternatives - A Roundup of the Best iPad Styluses By Brad Colbow

You asked for it, we're doing it an iPad, stylus, roundup, hello, my name is brad, and I review tech for creative professionals and today is that the question parent, hey brad, have you heard of the future mega stylist 8500k, it's for the iPad. It's do it, I'm wondering if it's any good, and you should do a review. Ah, I get this question a lot and I usually don't answer it because people don't appreciate answers that just are me screaming. No, so I shouted into the void. Instead, no, there are literally hundreds of iPad styluses out there, and it's impossible to review them all. In fact, this video started with the idea where I thought.

Maybe I could go out there and review every single iPad stylus ever made. I don't really uh have the budget for that. What I did want to do was a roundup where I talk about the type of styluses out there. So when you see something you can look at it and say yeah, that's a smart stylist or oh that's a dumb, stylist or oh. That one has a lot of potential, but it doesn't do its homework, and it's failing now.

Stylus first there's one important thing to know, and that is there are two eras of iPads. When we're talking about styluses, there's older iPads and there's iPads that have come out in the last two years. You're going to have a lot more luck, finding a stylus that works for you. If you have a newer iPad, if you don't, I haven't forgotten about you. I talk about options at the end of this video, so go to the point that I'll link down below.

If you want to get that info. Also in the description I'm going to link to a bunch of these styluses and what you're going to see in the description of these products are what generation of iPad they work best with, and you might wonder to yourself what generation iPad do I have. It doesn't tell me well, there is an easy way to know on the back of your iPad in teeny, tiny, nitty-gritty type, you're gonna, see a model number write that down type it into the googles, and it's going to be able to tell you what generation of iPad you have cool all right, let's get to the style eye, alright. So, let's start at the top the Apple Pencil one and two. If you want the best, this is the best.

As far as drawing experience, accuracy, pressure, sensitivity, palm rejection, these are identical to each other, and they might be the best drawing experience, you're going to find literally anywhere on any device. These are great, so Apple Pencil 2 currently only works on the 2018 and 2020 iPad pros if it's got that flat edge to it that lets it charge when it's connected to the side of your iPad, it connects magnetically. The original Apple Pencil, however, works on the original iPad Pro's models, but it's also going to work on the newer, more inexpensive iPads. This includes the 2019 iPad Mini and iPad Air and the iPads, with no other words attached to the back of them, the one that came out just last fall and also the one that came out in the spring of 2018. I believe this is the 6th and 7th gen iPads.

The main difference between the Apple Pencil, 1 and the Apple Pencil 2 is how it charges that Apple Pencil 2 needs to be plugged into a little adapter. It came with and then plugged into a lightning, cable or plugged into the back of the iPad nice thing about the Apple Pencil. Is it doesn't take long to charge if you're out and about, and you run out of charge you can plug it into the back of your iPad for a few minutes, and you're going to get another half hour, 45 minutes of work out of it. But why doesn't apple? Let me use the pencil on older, iPads great question. The pencil uses a combination of Bluetooth and sensors under the screen of your iPad itself to make the Apple Pencil work so well.

So this isn't just the stylus doing all the work. It's the iPad working in conjunction with the stylus, so older iPads don't have the sensors under the screen. They can't work with those apple pencils. That's the secret sauce, but Apple has been opening up the secret sauce a little. We're going to see that when I demo the next group of styluses, but before I do that, I want to talk a little about drawing control on your iPad and how to make it so much better.

Using today's sponsor paperlike, I've always found that the iPad smooth glass green to be a little too smooth. I like having some texture there to give me more drawing control cleaner lines, more stable lines. It feels so much more natural like drawing on paper. It also makes this really cool noise. There is a link for paper like down in the description you can get one of these to fit any size iPad.

Also, I hear they're giving out some free procreate brushes as a promotion check that link down below alright time to look at some third-party styluses. I have three over here to check out things really started, opening up with iOS 12.2 or iPadOS 12.2, no matter what you want to call it. This gave stylus makers a lot more tools to work with and dramatically improve the accuracy and performance of styluses on iPads, and that's why you're seeing like on Amazon, so many new styluses coming out because they're so much easier to make than they used to be so. What I have here this is the Logitech crayon. This is the first one I'm going to be taking a look at, and apple originally opened up a little to Logitech when they first announced these for the base level.

Sixth generation iPads. These were originally built for the education market. Let me turn this thing on. It has an Apple Pencil like tip, but it's hard to take uh, this top off, which is probably good. You can't really fiddle with it, like you can an Apple Pencil which is good for kids.

Also, it's kind of squarish, so it's not going to just roll off, might slide off your iPad, but it's not going to roll off a desk. Like the round Apple Pencil, even though the original Apple Pencil is weighted for that sort of thing, with kids they'll make it roll, and one thing that this has done really well, is that you get palm rejection, so my palm is down on the canvas and I can draw yay, that's fantastic! That works great. You also get accuracy you're going to notice that, as you draw you're getting like great performance, great accuracy, so this is in many ways just as good as the Apple Pencil, but there's one way that it isn't, and that is pressure sensitivity and, as you can see, I just get boring lines. If I was going to your know, sync, my Apple Pencil list and draw you'd see that the pen that I'm using has a lot of flow to it. It has a lot of pressure to it.

So that's the main thing, that's missing. So, if you're looking to take notes- and you don't care about pressure sensitivity, the Logitech crayon is not a bad way to go. This is actually a perfect stylus. The next one I want to take a look at is this. This is the auto knit note plus- and I chose this one, because this is one of the more expensive Bluetooth styli out there, and I'm going to be honest, I've never had a ton of luck with adding its styluses and unfortunately, this one's kind of the same.

So this I don't know if it's using the same technology that Logitech is using, but you get a lot of the same benefits uh. For example, I get the same accuracy, I'm looking for. I get palm rejection that works really well. One thing I do notice is that even on you know medium speed strokes. I am getting some kind of wobble to it.

So if I draw- and maybe you can see a little more wave than say- let's see if this still works- the Logitech pencil well, maybe they're about the same. This feels a little more wiggly. The thing that this, the reason this is more expensive is that it's using Bluetooth to emulate pressure sensitivity. It doesn't work in all apps. It should work in procreate, I'm not sure why it doesn't.

So, who knows? Maybe if I do this live it'll work, I've tried many things, and it hasn't, so I'm going to connect my stylus, I'm going to go to edit it and I tap and hold, and it says none stylus, no uh. I think that's pretty clear that this isn't going to work. I'm going to jump over to another painting program where this should work and let's see if we have more luck there, all right. So here I am in midi, bang paint, I'm in the stylus section, and it says turn on power and press with the stylus tip. So I don't know if you can see that, but the little blue light is on, so I'll tap and hold, and basically I get this for a very long time.

It never actually connects um and I hate to say it, but this is something ever. This is the third time I've used it added at stylus and I just never can get these dang things to work and when they do, they're really clunky. So my advice is: if you have something that works with an Apple Pencil, you could save twenty dollars with this, but uh from what I've seen from other reviews and my personal experiences, it's not really worth it. It's really worth going with a good Apple Pencil. Instead of going with something like the note plus all right, this one is called the object, uh I'll, I'll spell it down below in the description um.

So these things or things like these are all over Amazon, there's literally hundreds of them. They all look like the Apple Pencil. I think it even connects magnetically. No, it does not connect magnetically, my bad, some of them do. These are all very similar, and this is a kind of stylus.

That's very similar to these two. Let me go ahead and draw no pressure, sensitivity, great accuracy, very good palm rejection. I have noticed with this one. There is a ton of mechanical wave coming out across this, so you know I guess, if your note-taking, and you don't care about the chemical wave, it's not that big of a deal. However, for drawing this probably isn't the best bet.

These usually run you about thirty or forty dollars. So if you don't care, you just want a stylus where you can jot down notes and draw arrows on screenshots and things like that. You know a 30 dollar stylus, 35 styli, like this, it's going to work pretty well and there's a ton of them out there for drawing not so much all right in this section, I'm talking about styluses out there that are going to work on older iPads now uh. One thing I do want to say is that before the newer iPads came out four or five years ago there were Bluetooth styluses, they weren't, particularly good. They were laggy, they didn't have the accuracy that you're looking for they're really weird and nobody really makes them anymore.

I went searching for one to see if I could find one that was available. I found some that were used uh, but there were none new, so I didn't bother because basically those they're just not an option anymore, because they're not on the market. The things you're going to find are. This is the dumbest of the styluses that you're going to get out there. This is basically just a metal tube with a spongy tip, and this is easier to draw with than say your finger, because your finger obscures a good chunk of the screen, whereas this makes it a little easier to see.

You know what you're doing, but that's about all you're going to get. This is like a big metal finger. All right. The next I want to take a look at is this little guy. This has a little wobbly tip on it, a little disc tip, so it has the point of a pencil.

So when you look down, this is obscuring a good portion of your canvas when you're drawing this disc tip is clear, and you can see through it. So when I go to draw, it feels more accurate, and it's actually surprisingly accurate. Now, as far as other things go, it doesn't have palm recognition so, like I went to draw there, and it's like what's going on, the canvas doesn't know what's going on for handwriting oops, it's very easy to accidentally touch the canvas you know for handwriting. This isn't so good uh, it's just not quite accurate enough. The loops don't feel right.

You know I tried to draw the letter y, and it's just not. I don't know it's just weird. It just feels off uh compared to the other styluses. However, in a pinch, something like this will work all right, I'm getting rid of the new iPad Pro, so I can bring in the old uh 7th gen iPad here. Actually, this is the new 7th jet iPad, but I wanted to show you something see this goofy looking cord uh.

Yes, I'm using something called the sonar pen and this works on older iPads and I have no idea how it works, but it's using some kind of information that it's pulling from the headphone jack or pushing to the headphone jack, probably pulling to actually do pressure sensitivity. This one has a disc tip, like the other stylus we saw, and when I draw with this, I apply more pressure and I get more pressure. I also get a surprising amount of accuracy when I'm drawing with this. Let me see if I can yeah I'm getting pressure sensitivity. How do I increase brush size in median? All right? Let's try this there we go apply more pressure, I'm getting a thicker line, less pressure and getting a thinner line yeah.

So this works. I wouldn't call it super responsive uh. That is not something that this is, but it does work it's its going to get you further than some of those other dumb styluses out there, and how much does this cost forgot to look at the website? When I was looking at this, let me decrease the size. Uh palm rejection is so with this, let me see yeah. This is going to work with my palm on it.

No that's not going to work okay, so palm rejection is horrible as expected. So lets uh try just a little of handwriting. It's okay, you know like. I expect the d to look like a d um. I expect the to look like an, so you know when you start writing and drawing fast you're you're missing bits and pieces, but this is definitely working better than the other ones um also.

This is so annoying like if you this is like going to the bank where they don't want to steal your pens, that's what this is doing, and this is not fun to just bang against your wrist all day, but in a pinch you got the sonar pen, so that is a roundup of the styluses that are available for the iPad. If you have any questions or comments, let me know down below in the comment section. Thank you guys for watching, and I'll talk to you. In a couple of days you.

Source : Brad Colbow