If you own the iPad Pro, the Apple Pencil is a must-have accessory. It is a great tool, especially if you take a lot of notes and sketch a lot. Unlike the skinny styluses that are seen in many competitor devices, the Apple Pencil is luxurious to hold. The shape of a pencil makes it easy to work and the rounded look gives better movement especially when shading.
Design
The Pencil is 6.92 inches long and weighs 0.73 ounce, making it ideal to use especially in art projects. The cap at the base of the Pencil is removed to reveal the lightning connector that connects to the iPad Pro for charging. It is way better than adding one more cable to the equation. The tip of the Pencil is made of a type of flexible plastic and works really well in sketching and shading. The battery is pretty awesome. I always go for a full charge which gives me enough to last a whole day and sometimes more depending on the kind of projects I work on.
Performance
The Apple Pencil excels in art where the flexible tip works really well in applying color or shade the way you would with an actual pencil. While the Apple Pencil is a great accessory for taking notes and overall handwriting projects, I specifically tested out how the Apple Pencil is at creating art. Some of the apps I tested out the Pencil on are Pigment, Tayasui’s Sketches, ColorArt, Procreate.
From coloring mandalas to wielding the pencil as a paintbrush, the Apple Pencil is by far the best I have seen in its category. The precision and depth can be altered to best fit your drawing. And in shading, I saw that the pencil applied color on digital paper much like my Prismacolor does on high-quality paper. And that’s saying a lot. There is the obvious ‘feel’ factor which is kind of hard to get on any digital device/stylus, but the application you see is close to reality. I was able to use the Pencil much like regular pencils by applying a lot of shading techniques that I would perform on an actual paper with an actual pencil. The tip is easily replaceable once it is time.
Drawbacks
That said, there are a few drawbacks. The Pencil comes with a cap at the end, which can be pulled off to reveal your lightning jack that connects to your iPad Pro. However, I would have expected the tip to act much like a piece of eraser at the bottom of a pencil. It does not do that which was a little disappointing. Then comes storage part. You are able to place the pencil on the magnetic strip which is also used to put on your magnetic cover. That is only a temporary solution and does not work well in the long run. I literally have to carry around the box which it came in to help rest the pencil when I’m not using it. This can be quite cumbersome. And finally, it can only be used with the iPad Pro which is a bummer if you want to be able to use it on your other Apple devices.
Conclusion
If you already own an iPad Pro, you probably bought it for the same reasons the creators at Apple thought the Pencil would be a great addition to your iPad Pro – to help you with note taking and design. On the whole, the Apple Pencil is a must-have accessory for your iPad Pro.
