Google Pixelbook Pen

3.0 out of 5 stars

By Insight Spinner - Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2018

Poor design and more integration needed to make this worthwhile.

This item has two problems that are suprising for a $100 item. Problem one: poor design the pen has no hook or clip or place on the pixelbook where the pen can be housed. It rolls away all the time or if you place it on the pixelbook above he keyboard, then there is a tendance to try to fold the screen down over it. Just a hassle. The pen is long, so I don't think it works well in shirt pockets. But it works well in skirt pockets and the pockets of my favorite big loose batik pants. Until you forget to take it out and have to hunt the house for a hidden item. II have a great briefcase that has an awesome set of pen pockets where it fits well, but i'm not so orderly that I always put it back in its place. It's always either in a bag or at the last table I worked at and i'm terrified of losing it. And I have come to dread that sound of one Pixelbook Pen rolling, rolling across an uneven table and hitting the floor. Problem two: and possibly more important is the lack of functionality. I don't know why I would take my hands off the keyboard to pick up--first find, oh! there it is on the floor!!-- and engage the assistant feature, which works primarily with words I could much more quickly cut and paste to search for. In my normal work I have no idea why that would be useful. It took a while and a blog post how to figure out how to trick the Pixelboook into letting me access Andorid apps from my G Suite account, which I now know how to do using search. Few items really require the pen for optimum use. I have to say that I have had good use out of it with goth Google Keep and Squid, While I prefer Keep for notaking and sharing, Squid is very powerful for highlighting text in documentsand saving the results robustly. I've almost justified the cost of this product with that one function, but I don't think it is near enough at this time. And I haven't tried and drawing programs quite yet, since that is not my work, and I prefer to doodle with my spindle or yarn. Ah Google, you always trick us into beta testing your half-baked ideas! That said, I love the Pixelbook and think it is worth every penny. I am a power user, I work full-time on my chromebook and I'm happy to have something much lighter to carry.

3.0 out of 5 stars

By S. Strandberg - Reviewed in the United States on April 1, 2018

Good stylus feel, terrible battery life, limited utility for most people

As far as tablet styluses go, this one is pretty decent. Good weight, good feel, the button on the side isn't in as annoying a spot as most of the Note styluses (stylii?) All in all it feels decent. I don't really ever use the special feature of it, I mainly use it for drawing in jackbox games or when I attempt to draw something nice for my wife, which I think she appreciates as one would appreciate art given to them by a toddler. I've had a bunch of different Note styluses (Note 4, Note 2014 10.1, Tab S3, and a Wacom fancy stylus for the first 2, and I like the feel of this one significantly better, and I find myself hitting the button on accident a heck of a lot less. Downsides: - Atrocious battery life. I hardly ever use mine and I already need to replace the battery 3.5 months into owning it. I've only used it maybe a dozen times, too, since I don't do a ton of drawing with it. - Uses a stupid moon battery size (AAAA) that you won't use for anything else ever. - Nowhere to store it on the pixelbook. Google sent me a free pen loop for it, unfortunately it's pretty terrible and I just took it right off. I appreciated the gesture but it wasn't any good. It really needs a way to solidly click into place here or something. As it goes, I keep it in a pen slot in the backpack I have that I carry the pixelbook in, so it's not the end of the world, but I'd probably use it more if I didn't have to go grab the backpack to have it. - Its special feature is pretty gimmicky for most people. Some will probably have a use case for it, I did not. I played with it a handful of times and "huh that's kind of neat I guess" but it's not often that I want to google assistant something on my screen. I type 130wpm too so its utility to save on typing is a bit less for me unless i'm in tablet mode. - Limited utility in general for most people for something that costs what it does I know I listed a lot of downsides here for giving it 3 stars, but it still is a pretty good stylus, and some of the downsides aren't its fault exactly. Other people are going to be more its target market than me. The battery life is inexcusable though. For something that's supposed to be a year long battery life I shouldn't be getting constant "Stylus battery is low - Please replace the battery" warnings already, especially with my minimal use. tl;dr - Solid stylus if you need a stylus, lousy battery life, no convenient storage.

5.0 out of 5 stars

By Adrià Vilanova Martínez - Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2018

Lag is almost inexistent in supported apps, it feels like you're writing in paper.

I've used this product for a few days and I've got to say it's true that the Pixelbook Pen has 10ms lag when using it. But that's only possible in the Android apps that have implemented the new low-latency API like Squid. When using it with the Google Keep app it had a little bit more lag than with Squid, for example. Nevertheless, it feels like you're writing in a piece of paper in Squid. Let's hope in the future apps will improve the support for the Pixelbook Pen. Also, I have an Ubuntu chroot using Crouton in my Pixelbook, and the pen works great in there too.

4.0 out of 5 stars

By Pocket Lint - Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2018

Great pen, happy I bought it, wish the battery life was better though.

When the batteries are fresh, it works great. Comfortable in my hand, happy with the weight and feel. Very accurate, and extremely short lag time. Closer to writing with a regular pen then any stylus I've ever used. All in all I'm quite pleased in spite of what I'm about to write: So I like working with a pen a lot, I prefer to use it for most everything rather than just writing and drawing. And when I use it for most everything, it drains the battery pretty quick. And when the battery weakens the pen doesn't work quite as well. I've been going through a battery every week, so I'm trying to wean myself off of using it so much for non-writing functions. Also, it would have been really handy if Google had made the pen so it attaches to the computer because I keep losing it and it keeps rolling off the desk. I know I can buy a holder or jury-rig something, but for the amount of money I spent it sure would have been a nice touch to include it. To be clear, I really do like the pen. Most of the time it works like a dream, it feels good in the hand, and it has a clean look. Even with the caveats above, I'm happy I bought it.