Some news:
Anandtech chimes in on the other stylus company, N-Trig:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7070/ntrig-d...-needs-a-stylus.....the last paragraph:
Regardless of which stylus vendor you might feel is better, however, we do like seeing competition as it forces companies to innovate and improve rather than resting on their laurels. Imagine where Intel would be without the likes of AMD, ARM, Cyrix, MIPS, etc. over the years; or where Windows would be if we had no Mac OS/OS X, Android, Linux, etc. Wacom feels more like the reigning heavyweight champion, with plenty of device wins including the recent Microsoft Surface Pro. In contrast, N-trig has noteworthy wins with the Sony VAIO Duo 11/13, and hopefully they can get more Tier 1 designs with G4 hardware going forward. The simple fact that Microsoft and Sony are choosing to include a stylus, plus other devices like the Galaxy Note and HP Slate, suggests that contrary to Steve Jobs’ bold claim, the days of the stylus are not coming to a close with the advent of capacitive touch. If N-trig (and Wacom) have anything to say about it, we’re only just starting to see the proliferation of inexpensive, quality devices with stylus support
Aaaaanddd the comments:
nagi603 - Wednesday, June 12, 2013 - link
As someone who is a "copious note taker" (from Uni notes to work and side-projects) for at least 5-6 years and a former IT magazine reviewer... Wacom was still way better for me.
First and foremost, their pen is passive, which is a very big plus for me. No need to ever bother with supercapacitors, batteries or the quite large weight added by them. Second, precision. At least in the past, N-trig wasn't nearly as precise. I've tried it last with the Lenovo business android tablet, and it wasn't very good. On the other hand, the Galaxy Note's Wacom-based solution didin't have that many issues. (Apart from the size and the zero configurability, which, after using it on a win7 tablet was a big no-go.)
CrazyElf - Thursday, June 13, 2013 - link
Yeah same - the Wacom pens worked better for me as well.
I knew someone who works as a professional illustrator and he seems to swear by them. The Galaxy Note are generally more limited than the Bamboo or Intuos series by Wacom - maybe a reflection of their size. Note 2 saw some pretty big S-Pen upgrades, although not quite on par of course with the full sized tablets by Wacom.
cbf - Wednesday, June 12, 2013 - link
As a Sony Vaio Duo 11 owner, I second nagi603's comments on the superiority of Wacom. I have compared N-trig on the Sony again Wacom digitizers on various machines (Surface Pro, Samsung Viva 700t, some older Lenovo X200t tablets), and Wacom is clearly superior to N-trig, in three major ways:
1. Wacom is passive vs. Sony's active. Pen is lighter, easier to handle, doesn't have a battery to run out -- and easier to store! (The Vaio Duo 11 has no place to store it's largish pen!) And then of course there's the price difference between the $45 N-trig pen vs. Wacom's piece of plastic.
2. Pressure sensitivity -- far better on Wacom. It's not just Wacom's 1024 levels vs. N-trig's 246. A light stroke on my N-Trig doesn't register at all, whereas the lightest of strokes (not even touching) registers on Wacom. If the Duo 2 pen improves this on for N-trig, I'll probably buy it, but I find it hard to believe they can achieve real parity with Wacom here.
3. DRIVERS! N-trig still doesn't support the WinTAB drivers necessary to support pressure sensitivity in Adobe (and some other) applications. Adobe's not going to fix this -- N-trig has to. (And by my reading the patents that might have prevented this in the past should have expired in the last year or two.)
If you guys want to send me a Duo 2 stylus, I'd be happy to write a review of it, that I think would be more meaningful than this one.