N-trig DuoSense Pen2: Who Needs a Stylus?
by Jarred Walton on June 12, 2013 5:40 PM EST- Posted in
- Input Devices
- Peripherals
- Smartphones
- Mobile
- Tablets
- Stylus
- N-trig
A Pen for Your Thoughts
Given the current direction of technology, especially in the wake of Windows 8 along with the proliferation of tablets and smartphones, touch interfaces are only going to become more important in the coming years. We’ve harped on some of the touchpad manufacturers for producing less than stellar hardware, and there’s certainly the potential for the same to happen with stylus devices. At least for now, the active digitizer stylus market is pretty limited—Wacom and N-trig are the only real contenders, with the other stylus devices basically just using capacitive input (as far as I’m aware). So how do Wacom and N-trig compare?
Honestly, I’m not fully equipped to judge between the two—for one, I haven’t really used a Wacom device in some time (other than poking around at a Surface Pro briefly), but second we’d really need an artist or someone that takes copious notes if we were to try to declare a winner. I’ve looked around to see what others are saying on the Wacom vs. N-trig question; many prefer Wacom, but quite a few have also stated that the new G4 hardware from N-trig goes a long way towards bringing them to parity (e.g. in the Sony VAIO Duo 11). Ultimately, without proper hardware (meaning, a G4 N-trig device to go with the DuoSense Pen2 and comparable Wacom hardware), I obviously can’t call one better or worse.
From my use of the Flyer, N-trig’s stylus worked fine for the most part, but palm rejection was an issue for me, and that’s something the G4 sensor and controller aim to address. We couldn’t review Intel’s latest CPUs by looking at Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge, so judging N-trig’s latest Pen2 on the basis of time spent with the Flyer is something of a misfire. (So why did N-trig send the Flyer? Because they were paying for the hardware samples, and purchasing a bunch of Sony VAIO Duo 11 laptops would cost five times as much!) Even with current hardware, however, I feel like the end result would be like keyboard and mouse preferences—they’re highly subjective as to what works best for you. If you happen to fall into the category of users that want/need a stylus, trying to get some personal time with a platform before making a purchase decision would be strongly advised.
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.
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Dug - Friday, June 14, 2013 - link
There will be one soon. End of July if you can wait.Roffles12 - Friday, June 14, 2013 - link
Speaking with Lenovo support, they are not pinning down a date, but are saying the Lenovo Helix will get a Haswell refresh some time this summer. Unless something stands out as dramatically better, I believe I will be holding out for the Helix. It's almost good enough with the IVB processor, but I can picture myself needing 10-12 hours on a single charge and Haswell is my best chance to make that happen.WiNG_C - Thursday, June 20, 2013 - link
Any particular thing we can check out about that possible new release on end of July? I can certainly wait till then if the machine is worth the wait. I find myself still drooling at the Vaio 13 (despite the cost) but I admit that, while not an artist of sorts, the possible shortcommings of it's pen implementation could be a severe drawback when finally making my own decision for getting itJorj_X_McKie - Sunday, July 7, 2013 - link
Roffles, I suppose by now you have run across some teasers about the upcoming Samsung ATIV Q, right? That thing has me truly drooling. 13" super hi res, Wacom (and Wintab no doubt), full sunlight (supposedly), Haswell for better gfx and battery life. Pretty remarkable looking do-it-all. I really hope they offer a 256GB SSD and more than 4GB RAM.Update on my Sony Duo 11 and its lack of Wintab for Photoshop support. This issue has been minimized to a great degree because I found that there is a high-end art program that does support N-Trig.... Manga Studio 5. For artwork, it is equivalent (or better according to some folks) to Photoshop. The N-Trig sytlus works very well with this program. The Sony Duo 13 is a much more viable option knowing that you do have at least one really killer art program available, and it only costs $80 or so. Photopshop is so friggin' expensive you have to sell your car to buy it!
ZeDestructor - Thursday, June 13, 2013 - link
Just one thing: Wacom's pen is active, it just uses a patented implementation of Electromagnetic resonance to power the pen from the digitizer itself instead of any form of battery.ZeDestructor - Thursday, June 13, 2013 - link
Lenovo X240 Tablet would be the one I picked up, and HP may or may not go Wacom again (they did on the last two generations after using the N-Trigs for a while), if they update their convertible lineup (their convertible is still a Sandy-Bridge platform), otherwise there's the inevitable Lenovo Helix, the Fujitsu convertibles, and probably the Haswell Surface Pro variant.Dell will likely stick to N-Trig, although they have better docks IMO...
cbf - Thursday, June 13, 2013 - link
Lenovo X240? Do you have definite information that there will be one? It seems to me that the Lenovo Helix is the real X230 replacement. Also an X240 won't be very interesting if they don't finally bump the screen resolution (which the Helix does).peterfares - Thursday, June 13, 2013 - link
There has been no mention of an X240. All we have is the Helix and the Twist. An X240 would be nice. Keep the full voltage processor but swap the 2.5" bay with an mSATA (for a total of two mSATA slots) and drop the expresscard slot. This would allow the base to be thinner, lighter, and have a larger battery that also does not protrude. Then Make the screen higher resolution and thinner. That would make a pretty awesome X240 tablet.Penti - Friday, June 14, 2013 - link
Frankly the X230t is way better then capacitive only Twist or slate detachable Helix. We need to see a Haswell bump at Dell, Lenovo, Fujitsu and HP though.RollingCamel - Thursday, June 13, 2013 - link
On the software side of things especially with handwriting recognition Windows 8's experience is really poor. It doesn't feel seamless and the languages are limited. Talk about Samsung and the note taking experience with the Note 2. The handwriting recognition is really good that it even understand my Arabic gibberish.Can't believe a software company like Microsoft is beaten by a hardware company or its software provider, especially when the whole point of Windows 8 was the touch experience.