Review: Pendorra Stylus Gen 2

Pendorra sent me a free stylus again. This time it's the Pendorra Gen 2. I've reviewed the first model way back in Dec 2016 and the company said that the new stylus has some improvements and I should check it out.

More specifically, the following issues have been resolved:

• Line deviation
• Line intermittent
• Cannot write while charging
• No way to switch off the power manually
• No low battery life warning

I'll still need to do my testing so this review's going to compare the 1st gen with this new stylus.

The new stylus has included additional goodies this time. There's a microUSB to USB adaptor, microUSB male to female cable, pen case and a thumb ring.

The pen case is pretty nice. It's not real leather but it feels nice to touch. Sewing is done well too. Not sure how durable it will be though.

That's the thumb ring that you can attach to your tablet or phone. It uses double side tape to stick to the surface.

The only change to the design of the stylus is the inclusion of the Pendorra logo printed on the side of the body. Other than that, the 1st and 2nd gen Pendorra looks similar.

The stylus is battery powered. To switch the stylus on, you just have to press the button on the back and it switched on instantly (with flashes of blue light). To switch it off, click the same button and it's off. Both the 1st and 2nd gen will switch off automatically after 2 minutes of inactivity. However, only the 2nd gen has the ability to be switched off manually by clicking the back of the button.

I'm actually not sure how long the battery can last because I don't keep track of that. Battery life really depends on how often you use the stylus so everyone is going to have different experience. The indicator light at the back will blick red when battery is running low.

The stylus has a male connector at the end of the body, so you will need to connect the adapter provided in other to connect the stylus to the normal USB Type A port. If you have problems accessing the USB port, there's now the additional USB cable. One of the improvements say that you can now use the stylus while charging, but while you are charging, there's no way to switch on the stylus because the power switch is on the back of the body's cap. Anyway, that cable is too short for you to use the pen while charging anyway.

The small tip allows you to see the lines beneath. This is a good feature compared to those big rubber tip. However...

Just like other digital capacitive styluses, how well this stylus will work will depend on which tablet you're using, the orientation of the tablet and your hand position. All those will affect the parallax.

Here's how handwriting looks on the iPad Mini (I'm not sure which version I have) with Wacom Bamboo Paper app. I guess handwriting is alright.

Handwriting on the Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 is better (but that tablet already comes with the fantastic S Pen). That's Wacom Bamboo Paper app too.

This is One Note app on Tab S3. Handwriting is not captured as accurately as on Wacom Bamboo Paper. So how well the handwriting is capture depends on the app too.

On the iPad Mini and Tab S3, this is how the diagonal lines look like when drawn slowly. The usual jitter effect is there.

On the iPad Pro and my LG V20 (Android 7) phone though, the jitter effect is not very obvious. The 2nd generation stylus comes very close to producing a straight diagonal line. So there is definitely some improvement in this area when it comes to line deviation, but that improvement is only noticeable on the iPad Pro and the LG V20 that I've tested.

This is handwriting on the iPad Pro.

I've tested the 2nd gen Pendorra with several tablets and the results are inconsistent. I've tested for the accuracy of the stylus, more specifically, the stylus was tested for parallax error and diagonal line jitter.

Note that when I say parallax is bad, it's relative and depends a lot on how you hold the stylus and the tablet orientation. If you hold the stylus vertically like a Chinese brush, there's not going to be any parallax.

Conclusion

There is some improvement to the 2nd gen Pendorra but they aren't significant improvements. The observable improvement to me is the strokes having less diagonal jitter on the iPad Pro.

As you can see in the comparison table above, stylus performs quite different with different tablet. So there's no sure way to determine how it's going to perform with your tablet. If you want to buy it, be sure to research other reviews to see if there are other customers using the same stylus as you.

For iPad Pro users, if you're not getting the Apple Pencil, then the Pendorra might be an alternative, just that it doesn't have pressure sensitivity and palm rejection. Speaking of palm rejection, when taking notes, it wasn't natural because I had to lift my palm from the screen to prevent stray strokes. For drawing purposes I think using this stylus is still fine, but for writing it's relatively more awkward.

So these are my findings. I hope you find this review helpful.

Availability

The stylus retails for USD 40 on https://www.pendorra.com/

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