The best affordable active stylus pen
The Zspeed is an electronic active stylus pen (by ZspeedDirect) that offers 3 tips at an affordable price of CDN $45.95.
The Look of the Pen is modern and sleek with its 7.09”(180mm) length and a diameter of 0.35”(8.9mm). The black version looks classy and it comes with its own pouch. As the 1.45mm super fine tip is made of copper, it is long lasting. It also comes with 1 micro USB charging cable and a user manual. The pen design feels smart as it has a narrow stylus tip on one end and a magnetic cap on the other end which protects the usb port from damage and dust, while also allowing you to attach a magnetic fiber mesh tip or a rubber tip depending on what work you are doing. This is handy when your stylus has run out of power, you can easily turn it upside down and continue working with one of the other two tips.
It runs on a lithium battery which gives about 10 hours of active use and it conveniently recharges by Micro USB cable which is also provided. So far, I’ve used it for one whole day (intermittently) and have not needed to recharge it. And even then, it took less than 2 hours to fully charge. After 30 minutes of no use, the stylus will automatically turn off. The good news is that it needs no Bluetooth or APP for this stand-alone active stylus.
So far, the stylus has worked on my Asus Android tablet, my Samsung Galaxy A5 2017 phone, my HP convertible laptop and my iPad. It’s also supposed to work with most capacitive touch screen devices such as the various versions of iPhone from the 8 to the 6s Plus version as well as Google chrome books and HTC, Huawei, HTC, LG, and Motorola, and various Android based tablets.
Now for the action. I did find that the active stylus pen provided some accuracy and traction on my various device screens though accuracy really depended on the app I was using. The lag time between the tip and trace again was also app dependent. The ZSpeed Pen works well as a writing and drawing tool on many levels. There are some factors to consider when choosing a writing stylus for note taking. First every stylus performs differently dependent on the device you are using and the app you are writing with. The ZSpeed pen worked very well in OneNote. Its rubber tip had good friction hold on the screen and hence scores high on the accuracy front. The narrow stylus tip wrote smoothly and my cursive writing looked presentable which was not how the initial case with the mesh tip. However, after writing a bit more with the mesh, I started to see my writing taking shape the way it would on paper. The touch screen or a more expensive pen should have the palm rejection mode so that you can position your hand on the screen and draw without issue which the Zspeed occasionally ran into. The one thing about mesh tips is that they don’t do well if you are writing small c’s or o’s just due to their thickness, so you are better off getting a stylus with a narrow tip option if you don’t like carrying around different styli. In my cellphone’s Samsung Notes, the same degree of accuracy occurred in the same order.
The best notetaking experience the active stylus pen gave occurred in OneNote on my HP 360x Convertible PC, and the worst was in SuperNote on my Asus tablet. Again the rubber tip was the most accurate with the mesh faring just a little bit less in performance. The stylus tip lagged on the Asus tablet and the lines kept skipping. And so you are forced to continually repeat your lines to produce one letter, let alone one completely visible word, which is really unacceptable in a lecture setting.
Overall, I would get this pen just because it had three different styli that came in useful for different functions and APPS. In the drawing mode for the above apps, using the fine tip to shade in an area of an object was easy and you can adjust your brushstrokes by the amount of pressure you apply. That said, I would buy the Apple Pen for my iPad as I suspect the touch sensitivity and palm rejection would work the best in tandem. The Zspeed works well in Notability, Penultimate, Memo, and Goodnotes4.
Expect prompt delivery, with both stylish box and leather pouch which makes the Zspeed stylus pen an ideal gift as well, though I am keeping this one for my work!
