More and more tablet vendors are conscious of the need for more precise styluses that mimic the familiar writing experience.
I have been closely following Nvidia’s new 7-inch Android tablet with stylus support, the Tegra Note. According to Nvidia, this is the fastest tablet currently on the market, though there will be increasing competition from Intel, Qualcomm, and Apple that certainly will challenge this claim in the coming months.
However, I find this particular tablet design exciting because it introduces a new type of stylus that uses what Nvdia calls DirectStylus technology. It supposedly transforms a normal stylus into something more responsive with a finer point and better stroke control. HP just announced a new tablet based on this reference design called the HP Slate 7 Extreme, which also features Nvidia’s DirectStylus.
Samsung’s trailblazing Galaxy Note 3 phablet supports a stylus and while it has been marginally successful in the United States, it has caught fire in Asia and other parts of the world. Many people highly value the role of the stylus and find the one that comes with the Galaxy Note worth using. However, adoption of styluses, especially in the States, has been slow. Yes, there are dozens of styluses on the market designed to be used with the iPad and Android tablets but their imprecision creates a mediocre user experience.
During the recent media day when HP showed its fall products to analysts and the press, I got a chance to test the HP Slate 7 Extreme with DirectStylus technology. I was expecting the same lackluster experience I have had with other styluses, but this one was different.
Most styluses have a small foam tip on them to activate the pen strokes on the tablet screen. They deliver broad strokes that are good for drawing but that make writing and note-taking tricky. Sure, most drawing or note-taking programs that use a stylus let you choose the size of the stroke, but these don’t mimic a true writing experience.
DirectStylus on the HP Slate 7 Extreme, however, delivers a more familiar writing and drawing experience that offers the precision most want. Of the many tablets I have used over the years, including the original Microsoft pen-based tablets and the more recent Windows and Android versions, this is by far the best stylus experience.
It will be interesting to see how consumers respond to this new type of device. For the first time there’s a powerful Tegra 4-based tablet to choose from in a 7-inch form factor, allowing users to write and draw on it in a natural manner.
I doubt the younger generations that grew up using keyboards and touch screens will ever value a pen-based product, however there are many older folks who are more accustomed to using a pen. Plus in Japan and China, where the written language uses characters, a precise writing tool makes a lot of sense.
By the way, Dell introduced two new Windows 8 tablets with pens last week, forcing other big vendors to accept the fact that styluses are important to some of their customers. The devices, called the Venue 8 Pro and the Venue 11 Pro, use an active pen technology quite different from what Nvidia offers, but it too is fairly precise and will get better as more Windows apps are optimized for it.
Even with a better stylus I’m not sure pen-based tablets will take off, but it certainly brings to market solid alternatives. It is worth watching whether HP’s Slate 7 Extreme and other tablets with more precise styluses gain market acceptance. I see a great potential to meet a real need in the marketplace and drive more tablet makers to include precise styluses on more models in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment