How Does Apple Pencil Compared to Other iPad Styluses?

Steve Jobs was famously against the introduction of a stylus for use with any of Apple’s touchscreen products, let alone the iPad. But Apple has gone against its founder and introduced the Apple Pencil, a brand new tool for drawing that could transform the way that iPads are seen by artists and designers.

The Apple Pencil certainly fits in with the aesthetic that we’ve come to expect from Apple; it’s sleek, white and chargeable from the top, and it’s a gadget that Apple hopes will become the stylus of choice for any designer looking to use Adobe’s Creative Cloud apps among others. It’s specifically designed for use with the iPad Pro, which is being brought more in line with the Microsoft Surface range with the latest keyboard addition, and Apple boasts that you can apply brushstrokes to single pixels on the mammoth new display of the device.

The benefits of the Apple Pencil are obvious. It was designed with the iPad Pro in mind, and it uses the same charge port, but beyond that, it allows you to create different pressures when drawing, in a radically different way to the pressure-sensitive styluses we’ve seen before. The shading option too – simply tilt the pencil to the side – looks fantastic and opens up possibilities for artists, and the high-responsive, lag-less experience that Apple are declaring with this release is certainly appealing, especially when you think of some of the more elite stylus brands out there with speed issues.

How the Apple Pencil compares for artists with other styluses though, during actual, physical drawing, largely remains to be seen just yet. The precision and accuracy of the Apple Pencil is reportedly astounding, apparently much more impressive than other styluses, but then this is to be expected, given that the Apple Pencil has been designed with creatives and artists in mind, and not just anyone wanting more ease of use with their tablet.

If Steve Jobs had known quite how far the tablet would evolve, perhaps he wouldn’t have been quite so anti-stylus. It’s a must for the iPad Pro, given its size, but it also opens doors to those who wish to be artistic with Apple products.