Don't ask me which one's better, because I'll advise you to buy them both.
Lisa Gade of Mobile Tech Review compares the Microsoft Surface Pro 2 and the Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga.
Since Lenovo first announced its penabled Thinkpad Yoga, it's been clear that the convertible Windows 8 laptop would be the device to offer the Surface Pro its stiffest competition for the artist's dollar.
I received my Thinkpad Yoga earlier today and it definitely lives up to expectations. Officially listed as the Thinkpad S1 Yoga, the specs are very similar to the $1299 Surface Pro 2: 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD, Intel HD Graphics 4400 and the all-important Wacom active digitizer. But unlike the Surface Pro, the Thinkpad Yoga is powered by an Intel Core i7 processor and features a 12.5-inch HD display. At $1739, this is not an inexpensive upgrade, but when you add in a keyboard, the Surface Pro is actually $1428 and the only other Wacom equipped tablet in the 12-13 inch range is the $2000 Cintiq Companion.
I was fortunate to get a 12% discount on my Thinkpad Yoga order, which brought the price down to $1530. I won't be surprised to see Lenovo offer even steeper discounts in the new year, so if you're interested in one, make sure to order by phone and ask if discount codes are available. Also, be certain that the model you're ordering has a digitizer. There is an i5 model listed on their site for $1299 that doesn't have pen support.
While not exactly a lightweight at 3.5 lbs, the Thinkpad Yoga is nowhere near as heavy as the 15-inch convertibles from Acer and Sony that I've reviewed recently. But despite its weight, the Lenovo's size makes it a little difficult pick up with one hand while in tablet mode. The keyboard keys on the back of the device have a little bit of give when your fingers hold the weight of the tablet which can be a slightly unsettling feeling.
I knew I'd be spoiled by my couple of weeks with the Sony Flip 15A and Acer Aspire R7 displays. Although the Yoga's screen is big, it's not quite big enough to sit on your lap every time you work; you'll want to occasionally cradle it closer to you for detail work. Though not impossible, the weight and dimensions make this a bit more of a challenge than you'd like.
PC wonks heap praise on the Lenovo keyboard and while it's nice, I don't think it's quite all that. Keyboard travel is good, but still relatively shallow. I wish the spacebar was bigger. For some reason, Lenovo put a Function and PrintScreen key on the bottom row that eats up space and is sure to cause me to mistype. I also am no fan of the red pointing stick which seems like an absolute anachronism in this age of touch.
"Those of you who've been holding out for a Wacom device with a larger screen... may have finally found a suitable option."
The worst part of the keyboard is the touch pad, which has a significant amount of travel. It's pretty noisy to click and doesn't lock when the Thinkpad is in tablet mode. It's not active, but still feels very strange when you depress it while it's on the back of the screen.
Getting the Yoga set up was relatively painless. The laptop ships with Windows 8.1 so it only needed a handful of updates, including a couple from Lenovo itself. There's very little crapware, so I just had to uninstall Norton Internet Security.
The Thinkpad Yoga does not ship with Wacom feel drivers pre-installed. But once they are, Photoshop CC and other Wintab-dependent programs run great. Although the Adobe interface is still small, it's far more usable with the additional screen real estate. And you can always run the UI scaling hack we published yesterday. UI scaling is not enabled by default, and you may not think it's necessary, but I like the desktop icons and text to be a bit bigger.
I also tested the old standby Manga Studio this afternoon and it also ran perfectly. Despite the extra screen size, I still appreciated being able to run the software in tablet mode where the touch targets are even easier to hit.
The display appears to have a matte screen protector that may or may not be removable. It's so snug that I assume it isn't. The surface of the screen cover interacts with the pen nibs and yields very different feedback than the Surface Pro's glass. The felt nibbed Wacom Bamboo Feel styluses that I normally prefer offer a bit too much drag. The Surface pen tip feels less plastic, but the best results I got came from the Modbook Pro pen. Its tip glides like satin as does the nib of the otherwise terrible (because it's puny) standard stylus.
I tested for the "black hole" digitizer bug that many early European buyers reported and it does not seem to exist in my unit. Likewise, I didn't notice any latency or burn-in that several users are now saying plagues their displays. Some Thinkpads use LG panels which also created issues for recent Apple MacBooks.
As always, the true nature of the Thinkpad Yoga's strengths and weaknesses won't emerge until I've spent many more hours with the pc. But for the moment, it appears that those of you who've been holding out for a Wacom device with a larger screen (and don't mind paying a premium for it) may have finally found a suitable option.
Do you have any specific questions or software you'd like me to test? Please let me know in the comments section below.
The Lenovo packaging is a very utilitarian affair. Despite traveling all the way from China, there's no double boxing.
The contents are also very basic: the Thinkpad Yoga, a power cord and power supply and a one sheet set of instruction. Period.
Except for its stylus, you could easily mistake the Thinkpad Yoga for any business-oriented Windows laptop. The included pen is too small and thin to be your everyday drawing instrument, but the nib feels very smooth on the display's screen protector. By contrast, the Wacom Feel pens offered too much resistance on the display. The ModBook Pro pen's nib came closest to providing the same silky feedback as the Lenovo stylus (go figure).
In tablet mode, the keyboard's backplate rises, disabling and effectively "lowering" the keys. You can ignore the slightly ridged texture of the keys as you're holding it in tablet mode, but real distracting element is the touchpad, which is very springy and easy to click. It doesn't do anything, but it would be nice for it to be locked while flush.
This image doesn't do the display justice. Color is even and picture sharpness is very good. The display appears to have a screen protector which makes it significantly less reflective than the Surface Pro and other Windows 8 devices I've tested. I'm unsure whether this film can be removed from the display. You can see in this picture that the device has a small yellow tab toward the upper right corner that I might use to peel off the screen protector, but it also may be a small manufacturing defect. If anyone knows, please let me know; otherwise I'm not going to mess with it because I actually prefer the more matte finish.
Despite its larger display, the Thinkpad Yoga is remarkably thin: just barely thicker than the Surface Pro 2 with Type Cover (right).
Most artists will appreciate the extra two inches of the 12.5-inch Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga display vs. the Surface Pro's 10.6.
Although the active display is just shy of 11-inches tall in portrait mode, it's only 6.1 inches wide. A standard American comic like this page from Dynamite's Red Sonja #1 has to be reduced to fit horizontally, leaving two .8 inch black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. I'm still pining for the perfect 8.5 x 11 display where my comics and magazines wouldn't have to be reduced at all.
"If you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all."
Never has that memorable quote from Bambi's pal Thumper felt so appropriate.
Like most of you, I've been eagerly awaiting the arrival of the new Monoprice Interactive Pen Display since it was released last month. Though I just got the Yiynova MVP22U, I couldn't pass up the offer of an under $400 tablet monitor with similar capabilities, especially coming from a trusted name like Monoprice from whom I've purchased many cables and thingamajigs over the years.
To add to that excitement, expert artist and trusted tablet guru Ray Frenden posted his own very positive review of the device this weekend.
So when it arrived this morning, I quickly trumpeted the fact on Twitter and set out to do my usual quick unboxing and first impressions post.
But here it is eight hours after its arrival and I'm regretting my words. I love technology. I know this stuff is almost magical. And when it doesn't work as expected or as others have led me to believe it would, I feel a deep sense of disappointment. And this tablet monitor may be the most disappointing device I've ever used.
Why? Because I know UC Logic digitizers deliver (see my Yiynova posts). Because Ray Frenden has written very highly of Huion, the Chinese manufacturer who builds the other tablets sold by Monoprice. Because it looked so good out of the box: nothing cheap or homemade about this device.
But then I had to go and power it on.
Frenden's review mentions that viewing angles are bad and even recommends using the display on a monitor arm. But in my estimation, the Interactive Pen Display only seems to have one acceptable viewing angle: head on. The slightest tilt immediately results in color and brightness shifts that are readily apparent and reproducible (see photos below).
The rest of the issues I've had are software related and I've reached out to Monoprice to see if I can access development drivers that work better than the ones shipped in the box or that are available for download on the Huion website. Suffice it to say that the Windows 8.1 experience so far has been pretty painful. I won't elaborate until I hear back and will update this post as soon as I do.
Stay tuned for hopefully more positive news...
The Monoprice Interactive Display ships in an attractive box that promises a professional experience.
The 19-inch pen display includes Mac and Windows manual, a driver installation CD, the pen and holder, a power supply, power cord, USB pen charging cable, VGA cable and USB cable.
Out of the box, the tablet monitor is as attractive and well-made as any higher end display. The VESA stand provides a wide variety of support angles. Unfortunately, color representation is not accurate at this angle.
This is the monitor stand's most upright position, just shy of 90-degrees. I don't like to work with the monitor at this angle, but it is the only that delivers an accurate color display.
The pen and holder are wonderful, much better than the stylus that ships with the Yiynova. The entire pen is rubberized and the buttons are firm. No extra nibs or nib extractor is included. The pen is battery powered and rechargeable.
The connectors (USB, power, VGA and DVI) are a little hard to reach. You'll want to set the monitor on its face to plug everything in.
Unlike the Yiynova, all the buttons are easily accessible and located on the front lower right corner.
Connected to the Surface Pro without a docking station, the USB and VGA cables can be unsightly. I am using a miniDisplay to VGA adapter. The resolution of the Surface Pro has to be lowered to 1440x900, the pen display's maximum resolution. Mac users do not have to mirror their displays. This is a Windows only limitation. You can see some of the color banding in the darker colors on the upper right of the Monoprice screen.
On the Surface Pro screen above, note how the color is uniform from top of the display to the bottom.
At approximately the same angle, note how the colors shift on the Monoprice.
This is a typical screen shot head-on. Colors are saturated and even.
But looking down from above or from any other angle, that same screen fades to white.
I'm hoping that Monoprice will point me (and you) to development drivers. The default click sensitivity is set so light that any tap results in 100% pressure. The pen display is supposed to work with Windows 8 automatically, but the pressure setting makes it impossible to double click on any items. The pen only becomes usable as a navigation device with the drivers installed. Unfortunately, this conflicts with the Surface Pro's Wacom drivers, so the two cannot be used at once. For the rest of my driver tests, I was using a non-touch Windows 8.1 laptop.
The drivers also allow 4-, 9- and 25-point calibration. But the calibration didn't work on my system. Before I could click the upper left calibration point, it would click itself. The results were unusable. Fortunately, you can turn the calibration off by unticking the box.
Competition in the 15+ inch Windows 8 convertible space is beginning to heat up with the release of Acer's Aspire R7 refresh.
The Core i5-equipped model R7-572-6423 is sold exclusively at Best Buy for $900. This includes 8 GB of RAM, 1 TB of storage and a 15.6-inch 1920 x 1080 display with N-Trig active digitizer support.
The closest size competitor is Sony's VAIO Flip 15A which retails for $1250 at Best Buy. That extra $350 nets you an i7 processor and NVIDIA GeForce GT 735M graphics vs. the Acer's Intel 4400.
You can get a comparably priced Sony at Best Buy by going with the Flip 14A.
Below are unboxing shots with first impressions.
On the box sleeve, the Aspire resembles the Starship Enterprise. This is a little deceptive because the screen is not meant to work at this angle.
The box itself is an elegant black carrying case very reminiscent of Apple packaging.
Inside the box is the Acer with prominent silver Ezel hinge, a keyboard palm rest, power supply and cord, cleaning cloth and manual.
I was surprised by the included palm rest until I inspected the keyboard. For some odd reason, the touchpad sits above the keys and bottom row of keys sits very close to the bottom edge of the device. You will definitely need that palm rest in order to type comfortably on the R7.
UPDATE: In my rush to post the unboxing pics with my first impressions, I totally blew my assessment of the Aspire R7's Ezel mode. The trackpad placement allows you to position the touchscreen closer to you, theoretically replacing the need for a touchpad. Although there's a little bit of flex, the screen remains surprisingly stable at this position. I wouldn't draw at this angle, but perhaps traditional painters may find this orientation useful. Swiping and tapping while browsing is definitely easier than standard laptop mode, but desktop touch targets will force you to reach for your stylus or a bluetooth mouse.
UPDATE: Less chance of needing Gorilla arms to reach out and touch the display in Ezel mode. In this browsing, consumption mode, the lack of room to rest your palms at the bottom of the keyboard may be less of a problem. Or you can just use the padded palm rest that's included in the box.
UPDATE: Kiosk mode is also surprisingly stable, though I don't see myself ever using the device like this.
Another surprise is that the screen doesn't lie entirely flat in tablet mode. The angle is a nice pitch for drawing but it's not as thin as you would like for a drawing slate. UPDATE: This angle also results in a significant amount of screen flex. See the video below.
In this shot, the wedge shaped VAIO Flip 15A is in the foreground. You can see how much taller the R7's screen is in the tablet position.
The Acer Aspire R7 side by side with the Sony VAIO Flip 15A. The Acer screen is 1/10 of an inch larger, but it's very difficult to tell. Image quality on both devices is very good, but I'd give a slight nod to the Sony. I much prefer the fit and finish of the VAIO.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
If you can live with the N-Trig digitizer (no Photoshop, Painter or other Wintab program pressure sensitivity), the Acer is a decent option.
It's a pleasure to draw on a 15+ inch display though it comes at the cost of extra weight. The R7 weighs 5.3 lbs so you'll definitely want to keep this on your desk or lap as you work. Don't think about holding it in one hand.
The keyboard keys have a bit more travel than the Sony's and feel a little squishier. A lot of users have complained about keyboard flex in the Sonys, but it doesn't bother me too much. I also prefer the Flip's brushed aluminum finish, although I like the rubberized bottom of the Acer vs. the plastic bottom of the VAIO.
The keyboard and trackpad placement is terrible for standard laptop use, but it's secondary if you want to use this primarily as a drawing tool or in Ezel mode. The omission of a pen is odd, but it doesn't ship standard with the Sony either. The pen costs $50 direct from Acer vs. $30 for the Sony pen.
Opening, closing and transitioning between laptop, easel, tablet and display modes is very easy compared to the Sony. However, it's not possible to lock the screen in place, which could be an issue for some.
UPDATE: I've run into an issue with the R7 that may force me to take it back before I'm able to do much more testing. The screen is intermittently shutting itself off in tablet mode. This unit may have a defective or loose connection.
Acer ships with a lot of custom apps that seem redundant with Skydrive and other Microsoft standards.
In my brief tests of the pen, accuracy seems very good and perfectly in line with what I've seen on the Sony. If you're a Manga Studio artist, be assured that you can work very comfortably with 256 levels of pressure.
UPDATE: In tablet mode, the R7 has quite a bit of flex on the screen which some may find distracting. See the video below for a demonstration.
Despite the superiority of Wacom tech, these lower cost N-Trig entrants will surely put downward price pressure on the Surface Pro and others.
UPDATE: The $350 price difference (Best Buy configurations only) is not insignificant, and either convertible will work for Manga Studio, ArtRage or Sketchbook Pro artists. But in my estimation, the Flip is the better way to go for those wanting the largest possible Windows 8 portable art solution.
MobileTechReview's Lisa Gade is back with a second Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga video review. Here's a link to her earlier look at the device.
This time, she specifically covers the performance of the pen and active digitizer, which looks very good. Are you sold?
I've seen a lot of mention of Wacom edge tracking issues recently and Lisa addresses the issue by drawing an edge all the way around the screen. But except in those cases where the tracking is so bad that you can't access the file menu or other items in the interface, I believe the importance is somewhat overblown. Since the canvas is not fixed in any graphics application, it's a simple matter to slide a problem corner or other hard to reach spot into the center of the screen if necessary to paint into it.
I also rarely draw or work in a 1:1, menu-free set-up like she appears to be doing with Fresh Paint below. Do you?
Let me know if I'm out to lunch in the comments section below.
Our favorite tech video reviewer Lisa Gade of MobileTechReview is back with an exhaustive look at the long-awaited Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga. Unfortunately, the version supplied by Lenovo did not include the Wacom digitizer and pen we're all waiting to test.
Perhaps this is due to the digitizer black hole error we reported last week?
Lisa Gade reviews the Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga. This is Lenovo's business oriented Yoga with a 360 degree hinge and a 12.5" IPS display with 400 nits brightness. It's available with 10 point multi-touch or with both touch and a Wacom active digitizer and pen.
It's a long way from here to there.
Is it possible for a screen to be too big?
If you’d asked me that question a year ago, I would have immediately said, “Absolutely not!” But after using a 27-inch monitor with my Windows desktop for a few months and more recently working with the 22-inch Yiynova MVP22U V2 tablet monitor, I’m no longer so sure.
Anyone who runs a graphics program understands the appeal (some might argue necessity) of a large display. Interfaces have so many toolbars and menus and icons that there’s often precious little room left for your canvas.
I’ve tweeted with several artists who refuse to consider the Surface Pro because its screen is just too small. I sympathize with this point of view especially for users of software whose developers keep dragging their feet on publishing Windows 8 tablet friendly versions (I’m looking at you, Adobe!).
But there are advantages to smaller displays as well.
For one, you can hold the Surface Pro right up to your face and not see any jaggies on its 1080p display. Even at 13- or 15-inches, HD resolution is very acceptable for close work. But blow up 1080p to over 20-inches and suddenly aliasing is a serious distraction even at monitor distance.
The second advantage of a small display is that your hand and pen don’t need to cover a lot of ground to hit any point on the screen. The limited real estate will definitely force you to do more panning and zooming with your free hand, but at least your pen arm won’t have to travel as much as two feet to hit the file menu (see the picture above).
And with all the Windows tablets and convertibles on the market, the ability to perform touch gestures with your free hand is a given. But with interactive pen displays like the Yiynova, don’t even think about it (unless you’re willing to spend $2500 for the Wacom Cintiq 22HD Touch).
So am I giving the Yiynova a thumbs down? Not at all. It’s a great device for the price. I merely suggest that any of you considering it or a similar sized alternative think about your workspace, the distance at which you work from your canvas and the dimensions in which you like to work.
Now on to the Yiynova MVP22U itself:
I purchased my device via The Panda City, the US distributor which operates its storefront on Amazon.com. This adds a welcome degree of security in purchasing a relatively unknown product from an even lesser known vendor. And I was able to put that customer service commitment to the test when my first unit developed a power issue almost immediately.
I contacted the vendor via Amazon support. Panda City responded within the day, came back with a suggested fix the next and when the fix didn’t resolve the issue, agreed to send me a replacement immediately. I only shipped back my original once I’d received the new one and confirmed that it was working properly.
The Yiynova inexplicably uses a VGA input via a permanently attached cable. Fortunately, it ships with a VGA to miniDisplay Port adapter which simplifies connection to the Surface Pro. The cable also has a USB breakout which supplies pen control.
Although it’s not exactly ugly, the MVP22U won’t win any design awards. (For pictures, see my unboxing post here.) I’m unsure about the material of the white front. The display must be glass, but it feels more like plastic, reminiscent of the white polycarbonate iMacs of 2004-2006. The rest of the monitor is black, with six small clips holding the front in place. These clips protude slightly higher than the front surface, so they give the monitor a rather homemade feel. And the eight programmable buttons at the top center of the display seem positively retro. They’re also awkwardly placed to be useful. I’m not a button-mashing guy anyway, so I haven’t bothered to test them.
The adjustable stand will support the monitor in a variety of angles from nearly upright (78 degrees) to about 12 degrees. It’s impossible to lie the monitor completely flat, but I find the slight incline very comfortable for working. The Yiynova can be used in portrait mode but only in the upright position. I can’t imagine attempting to draw on it that way. The adjustment mechanism itself is very easy to use and I appreciate that there are no fixed angle settings.
There are four external buttons for power, menu, up and down located behind the lower right side of the monitor. This is an unfortunate location because the power is very difficult to reach while the monitor is reclined.
There’s a clip-on pen holder in the back that’s handy for storing the stylus. The pen itself is larger than any tablet pc stylus. It feels more like a Sharpie with a rubber grip. Unfortunately, the pen buttons are too close to the barrel and are very easy (for me at least) to press accidentally. The buttons also have significant play, which feels very cheap. I spoke to another Yiynova owner, who tells me her pen buttons are stiff, so it might just be a defect in mine. The stylus does not have an eraser tip. The pen nib is hard plastic and is unfortunately not interchangeable with other brands of nibs. The nib is notched and significantly shorter than Wacom’s and I find myself missing the resistance of their softer felt tips.
I’ve read claims that say the Yiynova is a Cintiq killer. Having never used the latter, I can’t say. What I do know is that the UC Logic digitizer powering the MVP22U is very accurate and responsive.
In my previous post, I described my setup with the Surface Pro 2 docking station and the Yiynova. I was concerned that the Wacom feel drivers and the tablet monitor would conflict, but it worked great right out of the box (tested primarily with Clip Studio Paint 1.2.7 set to Tablet PC).
I didn’t want to create potential driver conflicts on the new Surface Pro, so I connected the MVP22U to my Windows 8.1 desktop for testing of the drivers and setup software.
Although the desktop recognized the tablet monitor without any drivers, I was unable to get any pen pressure response in Manga Studio 5.0.3. So it appears that you must install the UC Logic drivers if you plan to use it on a desktop.
I panicked the first time I booted my machine following the driver installation because I suddenly had no pen response at all. After uninstalling the drivers and recovering pen control, I tried running the native Windows calibration tool and found that it didn’t recognize the pen touches.
So I ran the driver installation again and this time, after a brief delay, I could navigate the interface with the pen.
The drivers create a new control panel item called Tablet Setting where you can configure your monitors, program your pen buttons, adjust and test pressure sensitivity, program your express keys and calibrate your screen. The tool offers 4- or 9-point calibration.
Once I went through the tablet settings, I was able to see pressure sensitivity in Manga Studio and Photoshop.
As I wrote at the beginning of this post, aliasing is very evident when you’re working very close to the tablet monitor. I adjusted the pc’s Cleartype settings, which cleaned up the display of small fonts significantly.
When the Yiynova is connected to the Surface Pro, I mirror the display in order to pan, rotate and zoom with my left hand on the Surface’s screen while I draw with the pen in my right. On a traditional desktop, you have to resort to using the onscreen gadgets which is far less interactive.
On the positive side, the large display makes it easy to hit just about any target on even the most cluttered of interfaces.
The screen is so big that I find it difficult to see the whole canvas. I have to lean back or zoom out to take everything in. Without multitouch support, the pen has to do a lot of traveling to get from one side of the screen to the other. Since you’ll be leaning over the monitor to draw, you’ll need to keep your keyboard off to the side, which can be a bit awkward too.
One area where the large screen is vastly superior is during comic book lettering, where a nine point font is virtually unreadable on the Surface Pro. I laid out and lettered nine pages of a comic project yesterday and I was extremely grateful for the Yiynova’s ample screen.
So to get back to my original question: is a big screen always better? It really depends on your needs and understanding the limitations of the form factor.
Is the Yiynova MVP22U V2 worth considering? Absolutely, especially for the relatively low cost vs. comparably sized Wacom hardware.
I personally think that the sweet spot size-wise is somewhere between the Sony Flip’s 15.5 inches and the $400 Monoprice’s 19-inches. Unfortunately both those products are hampered by other limitations (N-Trig digitizer tech for the Sony and 1440x900 resolution for the Monoprice).
So for the time being at least, the MVP 22U is the only game in town.
I know I've got to get over my camera shyness to do the subject of Windows tablet art justice and remain competitive in this tech review space. But in the meantime, I hope you won't mind when I link to videos that do a great job for me.
That's the case with this excellent comparison of the Surface Pro 2 and the Sony VAIO Flip 13 by Lisa Gade, Editor in Chief at MobileTechReview.
In just under 17 minutes, she exhaustively reviews the pros and cons of each device and reaches much the same conclusions I did: if portability and Photoshop are a must, go with the Surface Pro 2 and if you need an ultrabook with art capabilities, go with the VAIO Flip.
Like Lisa, my first observation about the Flip 15 was the excessive noise coming from the overtaxed fan, but I recently turned off indexing and now the fan rarely turns on. I also was having problems with frequent loss of pen and touch control which appears to have been resolved with a BIOS update from Sony's Japanese support site.
I've cued the video up to begin with the pen technology comparison, but by all means watch the entire thing when you have time to spare.
Lisa Gade compares the Sony Vaio Flip 13 and Microsoft Surface Pro 2 Windows 8 convertible tablets.
Buttons on pens don't do anything for me. In fact, I think they're often a nuisance as I frequently find myself clicking them accidentally with my thick knuckles.
However, many of you swear by your pen buttons and I've been hunting high and low for a readily available Surface Pro pen replacement that will accommodate your needs. I've tested five pen replacements to date and none have more than one button. And the three higher end pens don't even have eraser tips either.
Thanks to a tip from reader Steven Weitz, I finally wrapped my fingers around the replacement stylus you've been clamoring for, although you'll have to pay a relatively steep premium for the privilege.
That pen is the Modbook Pro Digitizer Pen, which retails for $70 from the Modbook Store. The plastic pen is virtually identical to two other pens I've reviewed previously: the Wacom Penabled Tablet PC Eraser Pen and the Samsung Electronics Slate PC Digitizer Pen, both of which cost about 50% less than the Modbook pen.
Modbook doesn't offer any precise specifications, but the pen is 5.5 inches long from eraser to nib and is very light, weighing about half an ounce, just like the Wacom and Samsung stylii. I can only assume that Wacom produces all three pens as the nibs are interchangeable as well.
Modbook clearly charges a hefty premium for its boutique product, but they at least offer a generous selection of nibs: five felt, four pencil and three stroke tips. The stroke tip is grey with a small spring. According to Wacom, these nibs are supposed to provide a more "brush-like" feel.
Packs of five nibs cost $5-$10 from Wacom, so the additional nibs are definitely welcomed.
Performance is very consistent across all the tablet pc pens I've tested. Some users have reported that one pen is more precise than another, but I haven't found that to be the case in my testing. With calibration, every stylus displays the same accuracy.
I personally prefer heavier, slightly thicker pens that are closer to real world instruments. However, any of the replacements I've identified will offer a more satisfying experience than the standard Surface Pro pen.
I appreciate that the Modbook Pen's button is angled high enough from the pen's barrel to avoid most accidental presses. And assigning button actions is a simple matter of finding the Pen Tablet Properties in Control Panel.
I'm told that there are other two-button options out there, but I think most of them are for older devices and not easily obtainable. So if you absolutely need that second button, the Modbook Pro Digitizer Pen is the way to go.
Each Modbook Pro Digitizer Pen also includes a pack of pen tips, containing the following:
5 × Felt tip (Black)
3 × Pencil tip (White, factory installed)
3 × Studio tip (Grey, spring-powered)
1 × Pen tip removal tool
Except for its dual button, the Modbook Pro Digitizer Pen is almost identical to the much lower priced Samsung (above) and Wacom pens (below).