Stylus pens, and the difference between a pen that works on any screen and one that works on an iPad

A stylus is the cheapest way to make a tablet a notebook, and the shelf is confusing in exactly one way: two completely different objects are sold under the same word. Twenty of them are here, and the titles do let you tell them apart, once you know which words to look for.

Passive or active

A passive pen, which the titles call universal, 2-in-1 or capacitive, is a fingertip in a tube. The screen sees it the way it sees your finger. It works on every touchscreen ever made, it never needs charging, and it cannot do the one thing that makes writing on glass bearable: it cannot tell your hand from the pen. Rest your palm on the screen and the pen stops.

Eleven of these twenty are passive. Six of them are 2-in-1, meaning a rubber nub at one end and a clear plastic disc tip at the other. The disc is the better end for anything precise, because you can see through it to where the point lands.

An active pen has a battery and a fine hard tip, and talks to the tablet’s own stylus support. On an iPad that gives you palm rejection, which four titles here say, and sometimes tilt, which one says. Seven of the twenty are active, and every one of them is sold for an iPad, because that is the only tablet these work on.

What Apple Pencil means on this page

Nine titles say Apple Pencil, iPad Pencil or for Apple Pencil. Read those as a search term. Two of the nine are replacement nibs for the real thing, which is an honest use of the name. The other seven are active pens that are not an Apple Pencil and do not claim to be, once you read past the first four words.

The difference is pressure. An Apple Pencil, and the pens Apple licenses, draw a thicker line when you press harder. The active pens here have palm rejection and, on one, tilt, and no pressure sensitivity, because the way they talk to the iPad does not carry it. For handwriting that does not matter. For drawing it is the whole difference, and no title here pretends otherwise, which is more than the first four words suggested.

Android is a different question

Ten titles list Android, Samsung, Xiaomi or Huawei beside iPad. Every one of them is a passive pen. That is not a coincidence. The active pens here work through the iPad’s stylus support, and on an Android tablet they are a hard plastic stick that does nothing.

If you have an Android tablet and want palm rejection, the answer is the tablet maker’s own pen, an S Pen or a Xiaomi Smart Pen, which is not on this page. If you want a pen for tapping and sketching without charging anything, the universal ones work, and one of them is magnetic so it stays put on the tablet’s edge.

The generation list

Eight titles are a list of iPad generations: 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, Air 4, 5, Pro 11, 12.9, 13, mini 5, 6, 7. An active pen needs an iPad that supports a stylus at all, which means one from 2018 onward, and the list is the seller telling you which ones they have tried.

Do not match it to the year you bought the iPad. Turn the iPad over, read the model number, look it up, and match the generation. It takes two minutes and it is the difference between a pen and a return.

What none of the active pens says

How it charges. Seven pens with a cell inside and not one title says USB-C, micro-USB or a battery life. One says wireless charging, which on an iPad means it charges from the iPad’s edge the way the real Pencil does, and only on the iPads that do that. The cheap phone extras guide covers why the cable question matters more than it sounds.

How long it lasts. No title states hours. The usual figure is somewhere between ten and twenty, and a pen that sleeps when you put it down lasts a week of notes.

How fine the tip is. One title says fine tip. The rest do not say, and on an active pen the tip is a consumable that wears to a shape after a few months on glass. Two titles here sell spare nibs for the real Pencil; none sells them for the pens on this page.

What I would actually do

For an iPad, the active pen that says both palm rejection and tilt. It is the only title here with both words, and together they are everything a pen without pressure can offer. Check its generation list against the number on the back of the iPad first.

For any screen, or a phone, the 2-in-1 with a disc tip. It is a passive pen and it knows it, and the disc is the end that makes it worth having.

For an Android tablet, the universal magnetic one. Passive, so it works, and magnetic, so it is still there when you need it.

And if you own the real Apple Pencil, the DIXSG nibs, because the tip wears and the official spares are priced as if they did not.

Whichever you choose, the word to look for is palm rejection, and the word to look past is Apple.