I recently ordered the Dagi P507 capacitive touchscreen stylus as a consequence of an article I read in the German computer magazine There it was presented as a very convincing product with a completely new concept, and since I own a tablet, I hoped to be able to use it for drawing.
A nice demo video, though rather a commercial, can be found on Youtube:
I bought the stylus at Brando's (<<LINK>>) for only 23 US$ including shipping fees and had to wait 50 days, although they estimated 20 days at most. Maybe the German customs didn't know whether to charge me additional taxes or not. But now I finally have it and I can share my experiences so far.
The stylus comes in a small paper box and with a plastic cap [B] (I don't know what it is used for as of now), a second metal spring [A] and several new tip stickers [C] included.
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| How the stylus was delivered (at least similar) |
The spring can easily be overseen in my opinion, so be careful when throwing the packaging away.
<<My opinion>>:
The pen is a real enhancement in terms of precision on capacitive touchscreens. Even with the free version of AutoCAD's Sketchbook (express) you feel quickly like a "real artist" and at all places it saves you nerves by minimizing the number of misclicks.
The pen has a high build-quality and is as heavy as a full-metal pen. I didn't like the looseness of the cap when putting it on the backend of the pen when writing though. For me the length is still ok, but for others the pen might be too short.
I cannot say, whether or not and how often the tip stickers have to be changed, so far it doesn't seem necessary in any way.
The smoothness of the pen gliding over the screen depends. On my tablet it feels sometimes a bit scratchy, but probably because of the dirt it accumulates from time to time. On my sellphone, it feels very smooth. I think that by extending the spring a bit, you will even feel more like you write on paper because of the extended resistance - feeling just like pushing a pen into soft cardboard.
Of course there remains the problem with your hand heels. When writing a longer text or after some minutes of continuous drawing, you will feel the want to lay down your hand on the rest of the screen. I haven't met any good software trying to recognize and ignoring that so far, but I admit I haven't really looked for it. I don't even know whether this kind of filtering is technically possible or not, but I guess there exist only few non-paid solutions (on Android).
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| Dagi P507 in action |
All in all, the pen is definitely worth its money and it is fun to use, but somehow it is not a perfect solution. Capacitive touchscreens are in fact not very precise, so everything will have to stay finger-friendly which minimizes the use of the stylus, and professionals who want real precision, pressure recognition etc. will buy other equipment. Remaining applications are taking notes on your tablet (but don't forget to keep your hand heels up), presenting on your mobile devices and maybe feel a bit nostalgic over the old PDAs.
I hope you got an impression on this product,
see you soon
suluke
