Artist Review: Samsung S Pen Creator Edition

The S Pen Creator Edition is finally available for sale and I have bought one.

Samsung calls this the "most tilt-sensitive S Pen yet" and yes it does support tilt sensitivity better due to its new pen tip design than the standard S Pens. It's quite expensive though at USD 99 and the thing is there are many S Pen alternatives that offer similar tilt performance.

The pen is compatible with all Samsung devices that support the S Pen, except for the Samsung Z Fold phones that have their own S Pens.

The pen comes with two replacement pen tips. The nib remover is made with rubber and is unable to remove the pen tip so it's useless. You'll have to use your own metal nib remover to remove the pen tip.

The S Pen Creator Edition is thicker and length is 15.3cm, slightly longer than the standard S Pen.

The weight is 10.6g. The matte body surface has slightly more texture than the standard S Pen. This pen is more comfortable to hold due to the larger diameter.

The pen does not have built-in battery, hence it does not support Bluetooth featured. The pen does not require charging or pairing for drawing and writing.

The pen has a flat side that allows it to attach magnetically to the side of the tablet.

You can attach to the back of the tablet, but the case will not close since the pen is longer than the pen cover.

If you attach the S Pen cover from the case, yeah, the pen can stay in position but the fitting is not perfect.

There is one side button which may be customisable depending on the app used.

The pen uses Wacom EMR technology and supports tilt, 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity and palm rejection.

The pen has no eraser and that's a missed opportunity to provide this pen with more functionality.

The pen tip has a 9mm width and is noticeable bigger than the fine point rubberised S Pen tip. The pen tip and holder has a more tapered design that makes it possible to tilt the pen lower when drawing with tilt brushes.

You can still draw lines even with the pen tilted this low.

The standard S Pen is unable to draw lines when the pen is tilted too low because the pen tip will not be in contact with the glass surface.

Line quality is similar for the S Pen Creator Edition and standard S Pen. The main difference is it's easier to use tilt brushes with the S Pen Creator Edition.

Pressure sensitivity works fine, of course. And there are no issues with jitter or wobble when drawing slow diagonal lines.

Latency performance depends on the app and the tablet rather than the pen. With Samsung Notes, latency performance is fantastic. There's almost no latency gap between the line and the pen tip.

With Medibang Paint, which is an app with lower than average latency performance, there's noticeable latency. And if you use a tablet with only 60Hz refresh rate, you will see even more latency with this app.

The drawing performance of the pen is fantastic. Drawing performance is consistent and predictable.

I do use tilt brushes and I appreciate the new tapered pen tip design that makes it easier to use tilt brushes.

However, there are other S Pen alternatives that also can tilt low, such as the Staedtler Noris Digital original, Staedtler Noris Digital Jumbo and Wacom ONE pen which are all cheaper, like less than half the price of the S Pen Creator Edition.

The Staedtler Noris Digital pens do not have the side button. And the alternative S Pens cannot attach magnetically to the tablet.

The S Pen Creator Edition is worth considering if you use tilt brushes often. As to whether it's worth the money, I don't think so because there are more affordable S Pen alternatives that can tilt low too, unless you really want the magnetic attachment and IPX4 water resistance.