Experiance with Vaio Tap 11 (N-trig 2)
I am currently using a Vaio Tap 11 which uses N-Trig 2 pen and I think it's an impressive technology. I have used Wacom pens for a long time and was also worried about the N-Trig pen, because of a lot of negative reviews, but we should all consider that a Surface is not intended to replace a dedicated graphical tablet like Wacom's Intuos, which can easily climb up to 1000$ if you buy a large one with a couple of additional pens or mouses. The integration of the pen layer into the touch layer makes this technology the first choice for thin devices like the Surface 3 Pro and my Vaio Tap 11, and apart from the thin design, the parallax effect is almost gone with the N-Trig pen. Compared to the Wacom pens on older tablets like the Samsung XE700 series, I encounter no difference having "only" 256 pressure levels, and I hardly think anyone can except artists with very special needs and very subtle fine motor skills. Close to the edges of the screen, the N-Trig 2 is much more precise, however, at least compared to the Wacom enabled layers in some tablets (again, this is not a dedicated Intuo). I know there are some issues with the software (Photoshop supports Wacom out of the box but not N-Trig without their driver), but e.g. Manga / Clip Paint Studio works extremely well and much better for me to draw than Photoshop, as you can set up your own pressure curve to reflect your particular handwriting habits. One additional point: Wacom does not need a battery in the pen, but then the pen layer under the screen needs to produce an electric field which costs battery life of the device, so you somewhere "pay" for the feature. I don't think this is critical for a Surface Pro, but Samsung devices with S-Pen do allow to deactivate the pen functionality in order to save battery life, which makes sense for a smartphone or small phablet. The Samsung S-Pen is a different world compared to how precise the N-Trig 2 pen works on my Sony Vaio tablet. Again, if you have read reviews of the "older" N-Trig technology, do not compare it with N-Trig 2, it has certainly come off age. Let's see how it finally performs on the Surface 3 Pro, once I am able to get it my country (end of August).