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Even the S-Pen of the Galaxy Note 5 and bigger Note tablets provides a better writing experience than the N-Trig Surface Pro 4 pen, although the S-Pen looks and feels really cheap. However, when you use the Apple Pencil with the iPad Pro, you realize how much Microsoft’s stylus is lacking. This isn’t to say that Microsoft’s N-Trig stylus is bad it isn’t.

Drawing a slow straight line is almost impossible.

The N-Trig stylus offers a “squiggly” type of writing that feels more unnatural when you write slower. Although the new stylus offers better accuracy when touching the screen, the writing is less smooth. Microsoft changed the stylus to an N-Trig one with the release of the Surface Pro 3. The original Surface Pro had a Wacom stylus, which produced smooth letters, but the accuracy of where the pen touched the screen was often off. In fact, using the Apple Pencil with OneNote is a better experience on the iPad than it is on the Surface Pro 4. The most popular note-taking app, Microsoft’s OneNote, is available on the iPad Pro and it works very well, but not fantastically so, with the Apple Pencil. The iPad Pro has many drawing and note-taking applications where writing with the Apple Pencil feels completely natural.

Apple might have taken a long time to create a stylus, but the Apple Pencil is the closest thing to a pen (even though it is an awfully big one) that a tech company has ever created. Thanks to the iPad Pro (both the 12.9-inch and new 9.7-inch one), that has changed. The one thing the iPad has always lacked has been a digital stylus. The iPad has always been a great tablet, even if tablets are becoming less relevant.

The Apple Pencil beats Microsoft's Surface Pro stylus.

Apple pencil one note