by Pencil is FiftyThree’s first foray into the stylus market, and the company has made it an exciting one: The dual-sided aluminum pen integrates deeply with FiftyThree’s Paper app to provide extra tools and control you might not get from simply using your finger.
Unlike so many of the Bluetooth-enhanced styluses on the market, Pencil doesn’t use its enhanced capabilities to provide pressure-sensitivity in the app; the company argues that Paper’s line weight and opacity by speed variance obviates the need to build the options into Pencil. (I don’t necessarily agree with this assertion, but I’ll speak more to this later.)
Instead, FiftyThree uses Pencil’s Bluetooth connection to provide special features in Paper like palm rejection, multiple tools from one stylus, Blend mode with your finger, and more. Unfortunately, these extra tools are for Paper only—Pencil works just fine in other apps, but its expanded featureset disappears, leaving it as a regular old rubber-nib iPad stylus.
A quick drawn rundown of the stylus: The Pencil is pretty accurate for a rubber-nib stylus, palm rejection is excellent, and you can write quickly without too much trouble. The eraser has a few quirks, however.
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