The two tech giants fight over the fastest stylus
Apple and Microsoft are going head to head on this side of the market as well, and after Microsoft announced the world’s fastest pen back in May during a Surface event, the Cupertino-based rival comes to unveil a new-generation Pencil that once again claims to be the fastest in the entire world.
Unveiled at WWDC, the new Apple Pencil features 20ms of latency, while Microsoft’s new Surface Pen, which also supports a tilt mode, has 21ms of latency.
On paper, it’s obvious that the Apple Pencil is 1ms faster than the Surface Pen, but in real life, the difference between the two is barely noticeable.
Microsoft, on the other hand, has also bet big on other features of the Surface Pen, so its own stylus now features 4096 pressure sensitive levels. Apple hasn’ t provided any updated figures in this regard, but there’s a good chance the new Pencil gets very close to that figure.
The iPhone maker, on the other hand, is betting big on the new iPad Pro display to offer the fastest digital pen in the world. The new iPad Pro comes with a 10.5-inch screen that offers a refresh rate of 120Hz and which the company describes as “the best display on the planet.”
Microsoft has recently made similar claims for the Surface lineup, so the battle for offering the fastest pen around doesn’ t come down only to improving the stylus itself, but also other technologies, such as the displays installed on the devices it’s supposed to work with.
The Apple Pencil, for example, is also betting big on iOS 11, an updated version of the mobile OS available on iPhones and iPads and which comes with several improvements for pen input. Meanwhile, the Surface Pen is all about Windows 10, where Windows Ink is the core of writing and drawing.
