iPad Pro How is the pencil to write with?

[gusping]

Hi,

I'm studying economics at uni and am tempted to sell my iPad Air 2 and buy a Pro but had one question. I often need to draw graphs/diagrams and annotate them with labels, so was wondering how easy it is to write reasonably small, but legible writing for when i'm annotating. I never really write full sentences, it would be for the odd word or phrase. I guess you can pinch to zoom, then write so the words are smaller?

Thanks

 

[dalcorn1]

The iPad is the same size as an A4 sketchbook and the pencil writes almost as well as pen, including doing full stops which is something every stylus i have ever used struggles with.

 

[dalcorn1]

Just as a follow up to this I've been trying my pencil out for the first time tonight. In the apple notes app I am able to write as clearly and as small as i physically can in real life. Couldn't write any smaller if I tried, and it's indistinguishable from what I could write on paper.

Tried similar in the photoshop sketch app and whilst the end result was the same, the drawing animation wasnt as good. Letters seemed to pop in rather than follow the nib of the pen like in apple notes.

 

[Gav2k]

Just as a follow up to this I've been trying my pencil out for the first time tonight. In the apple notes app I am able to write as clearly and as small as i physically can in real life. Couldn't write any smaller if I tried, and it's indistinguishable from what I could write on paper.

Tried similar in the photoshop sketch app and whilst the end result was the same, the drawing animation wasnt as good. Letters seemed to pop in rather than follow the nib of the pen like in apple notes.

This is due to apps not yet being updated so Photoshop is in finger mode so to speak

 

[npolly0212]

Mine writes like pencil on paper

 

[gusping]

Thanks guys, you've made me spend another £700-900 on an Apple product... I'll try it out at an Apple shop when I next can. Now to decide whether i sell my Macbook 12" or not.

 

[Zenistar]

Writing is fantastic with the pencil. I've tried nearly every stylus out there in my goal to dump paper notepads for work and none of them have ever been used more than a couple of days before switching back. Since launch i've used the Pro with the pencil and am amazed at how well it deals with small handwriting, there is no real difference between my notes on an A4 pad and the same notes written on the Pro.

 

[gusping]

Writing is fantastic with the pencil. I've tried nearly every stylus out there in my goal to dump paper notepads for work and none of them have ever been used more than a couple of days before switching back. Since launch i've used the Pro with the pencil and am amazed at how well it deals with small handwriting, there is no real difference between my notes on an A4 pad and the same notes written on the Pro.

Thanks, I definitely need to try one out as soon as I can!

 

[timothevs]

Writing is fantastic with the pencil. I've tried nearly every stylus out there in my goal to dump paper notepads for work and none of them have ever been used more than a couple of days before switching back. Since launch i've used the Pro with the pencil and am amazed at how well it deals with small handwriting, there is no real difference between my notes on an A4 pad and the same notes written on the Pro.

Just curious, what application are you using? It is for note taking that I bought the iPad. There are a wealth of apps out there, most of which were suited to a regular BT styli (of which I have plenty), but haven't really been updated/optimized for the Pencil.

 

[Atomic Walrus]

The hardware tracking accuracy is excellent, which is what makes it possible to write so small. Apple's actually put the emitter inside the tip (almost in the "ball" of the rounded cone) which allows the digitizer to detect its position accurately at any orientation and makes it feel like the pen is physically putting the line on screen. Even the Cintiq still can't really do this; It has better linearity moving across the screen, but the pointer location relative to the tip drifts based on angle.

Software is another story. The pencil tool in Notes is excellent, but you can't configure it at all (for example I'd like to use a softer pencil when I take notes vs when I sketch).

The pen tools I've tried are all failing to throw out zero pressure touch events, which occur when the Pencil hovers ~0.5mm from the screen. This results in trails coming off of letters. Even happens in Notes. Some of these tools are also failing to deal with prediction corrections (OneNote, Evernote, Notability) which gives them strange pressure sensitivity artifacts (may not matter with very small pen settings). OneNote is way laggier on iOS than Win/Android because they've implemented some heavy smoothing. Etc.

So basically I'd say it's an excellent piece of hardware, and it'll be a huge jump from a passive stylus, but the 3rd party software currently has some catch-up work to do. If you don't mind writing with a fairly hard pencil, you have the best digital writing experience currently available in the Notes application.

 

[haruhiko]

Excellent, especially in the Adobe Sketch app and the stock Notes app.