The capacitive pens do need high resolution screens to shine. Drawing on a Yoga 720 (Wacom AES) beats drawing on a Motion LE1700 (Wacom EMR) by miles. HOWEVER, they do not feature the distortions and edge inaccuracy that EMR pens had. I used to think that the battery-powered, capacitive pens were garbage. The EMR detection system adds thickness and weight to the device, so companies have switched over to using the capacitive touch grid instead - it already has to be there to support touch operations. Joeblowsmynose said:Stylus that requires batteries or charging? Why? The only thing I can think of is that to get the thing super thin and light they had to go with this style of tech and make the stylus inconvenient instead?Correct. Note: As with all of our op-eds, the opinions expressed here belong to the writer alone and not Tom's Hardware as a team. And at this point, with so many options, the starting price should really reflect that. To do real work, to truly create, you'll likely need to get at least one of these accessories. And it's not that the Surface Pro X or Pro 7 won't be capable on their own.īut there's a reason they're marketed together. This has been the case since the original Surface launched in 2012. You've likely read some form of this before.

In 2019, none of these pieces come in the box (Apple is on the hook for this, too, with its Smart Keyboard Folio and Apple Pencil for iPad Pro). And if you have Bluetooth headphones, this won't apply to you.īut all of the options - bundle, no bundle, cheap keyboard, different pen options - bring forward one big point about Surface.

Of course, you may have a cheap one lying around from a smartphone, or you can get one elsewhere pretty cheap. And to add some insult to injury, there's no headphone jack, but Microsoft will sell you an $11.99 USB Type-C to 3.5mm audio adapter (opens in new tab).

Surface pro 8 stylus