N-trig

[godson594]

I really can't wait to see some artist reviews of how well it performs. The main reason I purchased the SP2 was because of the Wacom Digitizer but in all honesty I have never been able to get it as accurate as I want.

I would take tip accuracy over pressure sensitivity at this point...

 

[ximoosea]

I fully agree....I am not an artist so I use pen mainly for notes/presentations. I have the N-trig on my Sony Vaio and I love it compared to the inaccurate tip that I have constantly had on my SP1. Personally, I am very happy about this change from Wacom as long as palm rejection is not impacted (my Sony is not as good with palm rejection as my SP...it is possibly worse for me than most people because I am left handed.)

 

[ximoosea]

Here is a pretty good review of N-trig vs Wacom. He also makes note that Wacom can be even worse for left handed people.

Page 2 - Pen computing returns: Revenge of the stylus | ExtremeTech

 

[ximoosea]

Does anyone know if the N-trig pen will feature an "eraser" function when you turn the pen over, such as the pen with the SP1 & SP2?

 

[tinycg]

I have no direct experience with N-trig, but as I understand it the 'eraser' function will be the second button on the n-trig pen. I would hope that all 3 buttons are programmable but my hope of the top of the pen still being able to be an eraser seems dashed by most demos where that is used more like an action button than an eraser. As an artist pressure sensitivity does matter to me, and I've been a long time user of Wacom devices so I'm probably a little biased. The replacement SP2 I have that happens to be running the 4300u has better edge tracking, not perfect but better.

My concerns though are as follows:
-- N-trig runs most of their tech in the pen, meaning it needs to be powered. This has a benefit of making the device thinner which is probably why MS went this direction. HOWEVER. This means worse palm rejection, why? Because the n-trig digitizer is basically doing software palm rejection, and the pen is what sends the signal. IE only when the pen is touching the surface, powered and accurately sending data back to the device with the app able to make sense of that information does it actually work. Similar tech is frankly used in Adonit's Evernote pen for iOS, a powered AAAA pen communicating over bluetooth to an API stack in an app. It works less than ideal. Wacom's digitizer basically uses RFID to detect the passive pen within a range and says "ok I won't recognize any other foreign (touch) inputs now"... its a more accurate way to do palm rejection.

-- Pressure levels and weight, as an artist 256 levels is 10x less than what I want when Wacom's Intuos line has 2048, but that's not the full story. "Penabled" devices, basically anything in the last 15 years that's not a Cintiq Companion, still use technology Wacom developed in the early 90s under the Art Z II product line. That's why old Art Z II pens (of which I have one, erase, dual rocker switch and all) work flawlessly on my SP2... a 20 year old pen from about 94-95... But again that's not the full story. To me as an artist its also about grams of pressure to produce a stroke. Art Z II / Penabled tech is pretty good, a light stroke is possible, on Intuos the grams of pressure needed to make a stroke is cut in half meaning you really can achieve all 2048 levels of pressure. With only 256 levels of pressure in the N-trig (my assumption from reading reviews but I dont have actual numbers) is that you have put down a sizeable amount of pressure for the pen to alert that its touching the digitizer, trigger the palm rejection, start the stroke.. which is why in demos in the last day you've seen the N-trig be accurate but not have the same stroke speed, its doing more up front than the Wacom pen has to.

-- If you get another wacom pen you can replace the nibs, put in a rubber one, you have options. The N-trig pen as I understand it the nibs wear out fast, fall out etc.

-- Accuracy, yup I'll agree that's important and a bit frustrating to me at time based on how wacom's tech is designed, a lot of which is reduced in its newer tech, that they don't seem willing to license yet. Frankly I'm surprised at Wacom's decision to try to enter the computer hardware space, the first attempt being a year old reference board slammed into the same case as the existing 13" cintiq. My only hope is the second gen version has some real hardware design to compete, is lighter than the mammoth 4lbs and a bit smaller. Without doing that I dont think you can compete, which makes a licensing play with the Intuos tech make more sense financially...

The reality I face in what I've called "my search for the Courier" is that no one hardware manufacturer seems get it 100% right, no one digitizer is perfect on these devices yet from an accuracy / performance perspective that while they come close, there's still always something left on the table.

If N-trig is prone to palm rejection issues as I think it will be, there's no way in hell I'd use it even if its 100% more accurate, I can't have a situation where I'm working on a digital painting or something and then find out 30 mins later that my palm made all kinds of random strokes and ruined what I'm working on.

For writing notes, and capturing the One Note / Evernote space it might be fine, but 12" seens massive if that's the market you're after esp when the Asus VivoTab Note 8 is light, works great with One Note and has a pen built into it... yes I have this too and frankly its a great note taking experience that I don't think the SP3 can beat just due to sheer size.

 

[kozak79]

With N-Trig there is noticeable lag when drawing fast, sketching. Wacom is way better at this and the lag is not noticeable in most situations. There is no way N-Trig can compete with Wacom from an artists perspective and I don't get all the commercials trying to sell the SP2 to artists then releasing the SP3 with N-Trig. Unless the SP3 uses an improved N-Trig digitizer and pen and we see some hands on reviews from artists, I'm sticking with my SP2.

 

[kekinash]

In have both a N-trig device (Acer Aspire R-7) and a SP1, I sold my dell Venue 8 pro with Synaptics pen technology. Worst was the Dell Venue, the pen was almost useless . N-trig is better and on my R-7 it uses 1024 pressure levels (at least is what a pen testing program says) but is nowhere accurate or smooth as the SP1, which wins all over accounts. Wacom technology is accurate, smooth and without any lag, N-trig has a lag, not terrible as the dell, but is it.
Let's see what the SP3 n-trig brings to the market, before judging, but as is today I stay with the Wacom technology, and I not a artist, just use a lot the pen for drawing (technical) and notes.

 

[tinycg]

...Let's see what the SP3 n-trig brings to the market, before judging, but as is today I stay with the Wacom technology, and I not a artist, just use a lot the pen for drawing (technical) and notes.

Agreed, not looking to judge but also not pre-ordering or thinking of ditching my SP2 until hand's on reviews from people I trust that the SP3 is a better experience. During the event I was sold, then I realized it has the same basic internal specs to what I already have, and it uses N-trig at which point thoughts of pre-ordering went out the window.

 

[malberttoo]

It will be very interesting to see what happens with this. On the one hand, I have never heard anything really good about NTrig, and always heard great things about Wacom. I've always preferred Wacom, and their support has always been decent. NTrig has a TERRIBLE track record with the Dell tablets (convertible laptops), just absolute junk digitizers and terrible support.

On the other hand, Panos Panay has really won me over, and I do believe that they very much want to succeed with this platform. I can't imagine them going with NTrig on a whim, or because it may have been cheaper than Wacom (I have no idea if that's the case, just throwing it out there as an example...).

Anyways I am definitely interested to see how it performs on the SP3, especially since Panos mentioned "no paralax", that should definitely make for a nice experience!

 

[tinycg]

I can't imagine them going with NTrig on a whim, or because it may have been cheaper than Wacom (I have no idea if that's the case, just throwing it out there as an example...).

He won me over as well, that's why I'm so torn. My theory is it 100% had to do with weight and getting the device thinner. Going with a Wacom digitizer you can't get the glass/bezel as thin as they did, and my guess is it wouldn't have shed the weight they did either. To me this was a decision that was made to allow the device to compete better in the space at the expense of a better pen experience. Time will tell, I'm eager to read the reviews and really hope for all our sakes that MS hits it out of the park because the SP3 is a VERY compelling direction for Surface overall.

 

[GoodBytes]

Wacom pen can be calibrated. They are different method of calibrating you can try. That said, you won't be able to get great accuracy on corners, just OK. Technology limitation.

 

[tinycg]

Gabe at Penny Arcade got access to a pre-release unit and just posted a review Penny Arcade - Surface Pro 3

Confirms 256 pressure levels but says its not a bad experience, though he doesn't recommend it overall yet due to other performance issues, it will be interesting to see how MS responds... I wish quite frankly if this was such an important market to them that they got feedback sooner than a few weeks before the device ships. Though it feels to me like they're hitting more integrated GPU issues than anything else, which really falls on Intel.