Review: Lenovo Precision Pen 3 (Note Taking Performance)

This review will look at the note taking and handwriting performance of the Lenovo Precision Pen 3, the stylus released together with the (Lenovo Tab P12 Pro artist review) in late 2021.

Bottom line is the pen's good for writing but not good for drawing.

I purchased the pen from AliExpress for around US $70. The Chinese words on the packaging box mentions 2nd generation but it's actually Lenovo Precision Pen 3, model BTP-131.

The pen is bundled with the tablet in USA. However whether the pen is bundled will depend on the region.

There's only one replacement pen nib in the box. At the time of this review, replacement pen nibs are not available yet.

The pen nib has slight texture on it but it should not wear down that fast as it's quite smooth on the glass surface.

The cylindrical body has a matte textured surface and is nice to hold. Build quality is solid.

The pen supports tilt, 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity and palm rejection. There's no mention of Wacom AES which was used in the previous 2nd generation pen.

There's no movement to the pen nib while writing.

The pen attaches to the back of the tablet for charging and Bluetooth pairing. Battery life is rated to last for 15 hours. A 15-minute charge will give you 25% battery life.

Due to the pen's charging and pairing mechanism, this pen is not compatible with older Lenovo tablets. Even if you can pair the pen with other tablets, which you can't, you won't be able to charge the pen's battery.

Since the Lenovo P12 Pro has a laminated display, there's no gap between the pen tip and the line beneath.

Default palm rejection is provided by the pen and it works reasonably well. You can get perfect palm rejection with apps that accept only pen input for writing or drawing.

However depending on the angle you're holding the pen, there may be cursor offset -- cursor will stray away from the contact point. Holding the pen in 45 degrees works fine but anything lower or nearer to the display will create cursor offset.

The lines from the pen suffers from noticeable jitter or wobble and this affects drawing in a bad way.

Writing performance isn't affected by the jitter or wobble. When writing, we write fast and the lines are smoother and straighter. There will be rare occasions where you can notice jitter but it's rare.

The app shown above is Wacom Bamboo Paper. There's strict palm rejection mode available and pressure sensitivity support.

This app is Inkredible Pro which has no pressure support. The thin and thick lines you see is handwriting style applied by the software and it looks pretty good.

Both Wacom Bamboo Paper and Inkredible Pro are able to capture my handwriting quite accurately.

Even though the Lenovo P12 Pro has a 120Hz display, most apps still run at 60Hz. Latency isn't really noticeable to me while writing.

My handwriting wasn't captured as well with Microsoft OneNote. There seems to be more randomness. There's also the common MS OneNote issue of the text shimmering effect before the text settles on the paper.

These are the five pen features provided by Lenovo. You can access these shortcuts by pressing the pen's side button or tap on the shortcut icon.

Here's what you can do:

• Quick notes: The note taking feature is extremely limited so it's better to just use your favourite note taking app.
• Screenshot: You can take partial or full screenshots.
• Laser pointer: Turns the cursor into a big red ball with trial. This is useful for presentation to show others where you're pointing.
• Magnifying glass: Zooms into to an area to see things bigger
• Camera scanner: Takes photos of objects, corrects the perspective to remove distortion

I'm not sure why the camera scanner is grouped under the pen shortcuts though.

You can use the camera scanner to photograph an obviously 3D option, and the software will do adjustments to present the front facing flat surface to you. It works quite well.

I would rate the overall handwriting and note taking performance a 4.5 out of 5 stars, or A-. It's not getting the perfect score because of the rare occasions where jitter/wobble can still be spotted while writing. For drawing purposes, it's a 3/5 or B-.