iPad Pro - Pencil experience

[79wjd]

If you haven't used it please don't comment. 

 

For anyone who has used it, how has your experience been? I've been trying to sell my SP3 for a while because of all the random glitches and driver issues, and I'm looking to replace it with the base 32gb iPad Pro 9.7" (that I'll buy used for around $300) and an Apple Pencil (that I'll also used around $80). I know that the iPad is "less" powerful than the SP3 since one is a full desktop experiece yadda yadda, but A) I don't need that, and B) that's part of the problem -- Windows on a touch screen is really just shit. 

[Spuriae]

Own SP2, demo'd Apple Pencil and N-trig Active stuff and felt like neither was an improvement over the old Wacom passive technology for notetaking. Those old Lifebook styluses are great; they're the same weight as my fineliners, require no charge, and have two buttons (I have tap to left click, button 1 for right click, and button 2 for scroll), which lets me use it exactly like a mouse.

 

IMO pencil was slightly better technology-wise than the old N-trig active (haven't tried the latest revision which I expect to be better than the pencil), but the relatively wide nib, lack of buttons, and top-heaviness disqualified it for me. If I were doing professional drawing I'd probably still want to get an Intuos instead of the iPad Pro. Maybe even if I were notetaking; like a lot of Apple's recent products, the tech is good but the usability isn't.

 

Then again, my preferences aren't normal. I came from an iPad looking for a notetaking upgrade, tried the SP4, iPad Pro, and got an SP2 instead. You should be able to find an iPad Pro at any Apple store or your college bookstore and test the experience for yourself.

[SIMPLY MARC]

Recently bought an iPad Pro 12.9" and Apple Pencil for taking notes at university. Most of my note taking is maths related so typing notes isn't the best option for me. The iPad is pretty much the only experience I've had with digital note taking apart from a brief stint with a relative's SP3.

 

If we're talking purely about the feel when writing I found that I preferred the iPad to the SP3 by a large margin, mainly due to latency. My handwriting is still a little messier on the iPad than on paper due to the reduced friction from writing on glass but its not a huge difference. I can't comment on how the writing experience is compared to newer surface products as I haven't spent much time with them. In terms of comfort I haven't had any issues with the Apple Pencil, I regularly spend 4+ hours writing with it at a time and it's no less comfortable than a normal pen for me. 

 

The lack of additional buttons on the Apple Pencil is annoying at first but you get used to it, I would still prefer a design like the surface pens though. Battery life also isn't that great on the Apple Pencils, I find that I need to charge it on almost a daily basis if I'm using it heavily. It does charge quickly though and you can always top it up by plugging it into the iPad itself. Another issue with the battery is standby drain, if you leave the pencil connected to the iPad it will remain active while it senses movement causing the battery to drain pretty quickly if you're storing it in a backpack or moving around with it. The solution to this is to disconnect the pencil by disabling bluetooth however this requires you to plug the pencil into the iPad every time you want to reconnect it. 

 

As long as you have a laptop or desktop the iPad is fine, I definitely wouldn't recommend trying to replace a computer with it due to the limitations imposed by IOS but it sounds like you understand that. 

[79wjd]

25 minutes ago, SIMPLY MARC said:

The lack of additional buttons on the Apple Pencil is annoying at first but you get used to it, I would still prefer a design like the surface pens though.

 

Battery life also isn't that great on the Apple Pencils, I find that I need to charge it on almost a daily basis if I'm using it heavily. It does charge quickly though and you can always top it up by plugging it into the iPad itself. Another issue with the battery is standby drain, if you leave the pencil connected to the iPad it will remain active while it senses movement causing the battery to drain pretty quickly if you're storing it in a backpack or moving around with it. The solution to this is to disconnect the pencil by disabling bluetooth however this requires you to plug the pencil into the iPad every time you want to reconnect it. 

 

As long as you have a laptop or desktop the iPad is fine, I definitely wouldn't recommend trying to replace a computer with it due to the limitations imposed by IOS but it sounds like you understand that. 

The lack of buttons on the Pencil is something that has really concerned me anytime I've considered switching as I use the erase button on my SP3 pen all the time -- although I do always find myself twirling the pen every time I want to erase something since the button always manages to find itself out of position, so having to click the erase button at the top of One Note might not actually be much worse. 

 

Battery life I think I would get used to, after all it doesn't take that long to get a quick charge by just plugging it into the lightning port. Having to plug it in every time I want to reconnect it (if I disable BT) though sounds like a huge pain and a real oversight by Apple. Turning Bluetooth back on really should just automatically pair the two again. Are you running iOS 10/11? 

 

Yeah, it would be a supplemental device to my laptop -- if I had to use my SP3 as a laptop I would literally have thrown it out the window a few dozen times by now. As it stands, I basically only use it for taking handwritten notes in One Note, and I've already wanted to throw it out the window on several occasions. 

[SIMPLY MARC]

9 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

The lack of buttons on the Pencil is something that has really concerned me anytime I've considered switching as I use the erase button on my SP3 pen all the time -- although I do always find myself twirling the pen every time I want to erase something since the button always manages to find itself out of position, so having to click the erase button at the top of One Note might not actually be much worse. 

 

Battery life I think I would get used to, after all it doesn't take that long to get a quick charge by just plugging it into the lightning port. Having to plug it in every time I want to reconnect it (if I disable BT) though sounds like a huge pain and a real oversight by Apple. Turning Bluetooth back on really should just automatically pair the two again. Are you running iOS 10/11? 

 

Yeah, it would be a supplemental device to my laptop -- if I had to use my SP3 as a laptop I would literally have thrown it out the window a few dozen times by now. As it stands, I basically only use it for taking handwritten notes in One Note, and I've already wanted to throw it out the window on several occasions. 

I'm currently on iOS 11. I have noticed that with iOS 11 the action centre toggle for BT doesn't actually disable BT, the Apple Pencil remains connected even with BT toggled off in the action centre. I've found this to be a pain as now when I want to disconnect the Apple Pencil to reduce standby drain I either have to open the settings application and turn off BT there or enable airplane mode in the action centre. For some users this may be an improvement as you can toggle BT off to disconnect other devices such as wireless headphones while keeping the Apple Pencil connected. 

 

I've found that in my experience OneNote doesn't work all that great on the iPad due to the writing feel, compared to other note taking applications it just doesn't seem to feel as good to write with. My solution has been to use Notability or GoodNotes with Google Drive syncing enabled however a lot of iPad users have found that the cross platform compatibility of OneNote outweighs the negatives.