14 DAY TRIAL // As we reported in a previous news bit, Dell has apparently started shipping new and improved Active Styluses “Rev A01” to customers around the globe.
Back in mid-January, we brought you news about a frustrating situation affecting Dell Venue 8 Pro and Dell Venue 11 tablet owners. After months of complaining about the quality of the dedicated Active Stylus meant to be used in concert with the tablets, users saw Dell quietly pull the accessories from sale, without giving much notice.
The PC maker remained silent on what exactly was causing the issue, but it kept a close eye on monitoring things around forums discussing the problem. Now fast forward to mid-February, when we told you that Dell had finally managed to pull itself together and started shipping the first new batch of Active Styluses with Synaptics technology.
The new accessories have made it to several users reporting on the TabletPCReviews. Their commentaries might prove useful to those thinking of ordering the new “Rev A01” styluses.
Right off the bat, user Dragontamer complains about the pressure-lag.
“I just got my A01 model pen yesterday, so I came to post my feelings on the stylus,” he says. “The stylus has pressure-lag. When you push down on the stylus, it takes a few dozen milliseconds before it starts writing, and when you let go, it again takes dozens of milliseconds before it stops writing.”
“As long as you consciously pause when placing the pen... and consciously pause before lifting the pen, you'll do fine. Again, its only a fraction of a second, but it slows down my writing beyond what I feel is natural.”
“The pressure lag becomes very obvious when you play a fast-paced game like 10,000,000, and compare it with the capacitive sensor that you use your fingers with. I'm at a significant disadvantage when I use the Dell stylus.”
“I ended up receiving my new stylus today and have been doing some testing with it versus my old A00 stylus in both Onenote and just general writing.”
“My A10 stylus seems to write better with less trails in Onenote. The new pen seems to have less default pressure than the old pen. What is kind of odd is in the keyboard writing mode it has no trails at all. In all the old pen works better for writing but the battery life was terrible.”
User azyhong also mentions pressure-lag, which for him translates into a slight ink trailing that’s visible in his handwriting sample (done in Windows Journal).
“The trailing means I have hooks on the ends of some letters. However, occasionally (usually when I'm just starting to write after not using the pen for a time), the pen continues to ink for almost 2 seconds after I have lifted my pen off the screen, leaving scribbles across my page.”
Going through the thread, we can see Dell hasn't improved everything it could have, but overall Dell Pro owners agree that the new styluses are slightly better.
So, if you haven’t purchased a Dell Venue 8 Pro or Venue 11 Pro, but you were planning to do so also because of the Active Stylus, take a moment to go through these comments to get an idea of what you might be up against.
Then again, the ASUS VivoTab Note 8 is already available for purchase, and its Wacom Pen is reportedly working really well, so you might want to take this option into consideration too.