Are off-brand digital stylus pens any good?

May 11, 2018 9:46 PM

I've just bought a Microsoft Surface Pro but at the time I balked at the thought of spending an extra £99 on the official Surface Pen. There are third-party alternatives on Amazon for closer to £30-35; are these a worthwhile alternative or would I just be wasting money? It'll be used for note-taking and annotating far more than drawing.
posted by A Robot Ninja to Technology (3 answers total)

I bought a bamboo stylus, I liked it, but I promptly lost it. If I remember, if the surface has that little magnetic attachment. When I buy another pen I will end up buying the real one just for that purpose.
posted by AlexiaSky at 12:03 AM on May 12, 2018

I don't have any experience with a third party stylus on my Surface, but if all you're doing is note-taking, then I'd say give them a shot. Make sure they have a pointy tip and use a battery, though; some cheap styluses just have a conductive rubber nub that basically uses the capacitive touch sensor instead of the more accurate pen sensor.
posted by Aleyn at 10:45 AM on May 12, 2018

Back when Surface Pros used Wacom digitizers I had great success with a pen designed for a different tablet (some Fujitsu model, I think) that used the same digitizer technology. Given that, I would try to go with the same thing here (except N-Trig, not Wacom) and try to find a more affordable OEM stylus - a cursory search seems to turn up some Sony, Asus and Fujitsu tablets that use N-Trig digitizers.
posted by btfreek at 1:29 PM on May 12, 2018