Review: Adonit Jot Touch with Pixelpoint pressure sensitive stylus for iPad

Adonit is a company that manufactures mainly styluses.

Adonit Jot Touch with Pixelpoint is a Bluetooth stylus evolved from Jot Touch 4. The Jot Touch 4 has the transparent disc at the nib. Both styluses are pressure sensitive. Then there's the non-pressure sensitive Jot Pro.

Adonit Jot Touch Pixelpoint is only compatible with the Apple's iPad, specifically iPad 3 or newer, iPad Air and iPad Mini. You cannot use this on Android tablets.

Design

Build quality is good. The stylus is mostly metal with a smooth finishing and rubber grip. It's comfortable to hold. At the grip section are two buttons and at one side of the button there's a charging light.

There's a built-in battery. It takes less than 2 hours for a full charge and can be used up to 10 hours. Since I don't use the stylus for 10 hours non-stop, that's good enough to last me a day.

At the bottom of the stylus is a charging port. You place the stylus on the USB charger provided to charge. The USB charger is sized like those small flash drive that you can plug into any computer. Ideally, your computer's USB port should be in horizontal position, because when you mount the stylus on the the charger, the stylus stands upright. Imagine if your port is vertical, then your stylus will be totally horizontal. But fear not, even if it's going to look funny while charging, the pen's magnet will strongly attach itself to the USB charger and it will not fall off.

The USB charger is small and can be easily misplaced. I actually lost mine because I wanted to bring it to the office for charging. Then I bought a replacement. A few weeks later I found the original charger in the corner in my bag. -_-

Adonit has removed the transparent disc that was in the Jot Touch 4. The nib is now a piece of black plastic tip. It's a 3.17mm nib powered by Adonit’s Pixelpoint technology. It's hard so it makes those contact sounds when you use it against another hard surface like the glass on the iPad. Contact sounds are minimal and a minor issue.

The biggest advantage of this new nib is it's smaller and now you'll get to see more of the drawing surface. While the previous transparent disc does a good job at not blocking your view of the screen, it's best that there wasn't any transparent disc to begin with.

The hard plastic nib also feels like it's going to last longer. There are no replacement nibs.

While the nib is hard, I don't feel that it's going to scratch the iPad screen. However, if you want to be safe, you should get a screen protector. But I really think that is not necessary.

One important thing to note is this stylus can only be used when there's battery power. In other words, it would not even function as a normal stylus (aka dumb stylus) when there's no battery. This is different to the Jot Touch 4 where you can still use it without power, just that you won't get the pressure sensitive feature. It's best to charge the Pixelpoint every night so you won't run out of battery halfway because the stylus will turn into a useless metal stick.

Performance

Pressure sensitive styluses, regardless of brand, are designed to be used on certain apps. On some apps, there will be more features, e.g. pressure sensitive, palm rejection. On other apps, this expensive stylus will function no different than those $10 stylus.

Accuracy and alignment overall is quite good. For those apps that don't support PixelPoint in anyway, you can still write or draw with the stylus even at a very low angle and the point will be aligned to directly below the tip.

The stylus will go into auto-sleep mode after a few minutes. When it's sleeping, it's unusable because, remember, that it requires electric power for the nib. You have to click the side buttons to power it on before using it again. Minor issue.

Below are my observations with various different drawing programs that I've used.

Bamboo Paper

Bamboo Paper is created by Wacom and only supports Wacom products.

Jot Touch Pixelpoint functions like a dumb stylus here.

Another downside is there's a tendency to create a hook when you lift off the stylus. That's because the nib of the stylus actually has room for wriggling. When you press the nib down, the nib will get pushed into the stylus, and when you lift the nib, that act of lifting can produce the unwanted hook in your line. I say that it's a tendency because you can learn to avoid it.

Bamboo Paper is a good app. But it's best used with dumb stylus because even their Intuos Creative Stylus 2 does work well with it (by the way I rated that stylus 0 out of 5 stars).

Sketchbook Pro

The interface feels a bit choppy even if the lines come out rather smooth. If you're using your finger, then the interface goes back to instantaneous response again. So it's most likely an issue with the compatibility with Jot Touch Pixelpoint.

Paper by FiftyThree

Jot Touch Pixelpoint performs like a dumb stylus with Paper. Performance is smooth overall with very little lag.

If Paper is your main drawing app, you should get Pencil stylus instead.

Procreate

This is one of the best drawing apps for the iPad and has support for Jot Touch Pixelpoint.

Procreate's settings allows you to customize the two stylus buttons and also choose your writing style, e.g. whether you're left or right handed.

Offset is handled quite well in the software. Performance is smooth and there's no lag. It supports pressure sensitivity as well. No palm rejection though.

Overall experience with the stylus is positive. But that's really because Procreate is a well designed software to begin with.

Adobe (Photoshop) Sketch and (Illustrator) Draw

Both Adobe apps support pressure sensitivity and palm rejection.

Pressure sensitivity and palm rejection works reasonably well.

Offset is handled quite nicely. You can choose between left or right handed, and under each you have three different hand positions to choose from.

General drawing experience is pleasant.

Adonit Support

This review was written after I received a replacement stylus from Adonit because my first one had offset problems, and then it totally failed after a month or so.

You just have to contact Adonit support and they will help you troubleshoot your stylus. In the event that the stylus is indeed faulty, you'll have to provide a photo and receipt (electronic ones are fine), mail in the stylus and they will send you a new stylus. Shipping cost will be reimbursed by them. The support staff is really responsive and I've to give them the thumbs up there. The replacement process is effortless and fast.

The replacement works as advertised and I'm overall quite pleased.

Conclusion

Adonit may have removed the transparent plastic disc, but it seems that the accuracy of the nib has not been affected. And they have somehow managed also to reduce the size of the nib, which really helps you see what you're drawing.

The most important thing to note is this that all of the stylus' positive features are tied specifically to the apps that support it. Hence the main consideration when getting this stylus is whether or not this stylus is supported by the drawing app you use.

Jot Touch Pixelpoint works best with Procreate. So if that's your main drawing app, then great, it might be the stylus you should get. Using the PixelPoint with Adobe Sketch and Draw are both satisfactory as well. Those using Paper by FiftyThree should get the Pencil stylus instead. Sketchbook Pro unfortunately does not work well.

To sum it up, when you're drawing on unsupported apps, it functions like a dumb stylus but accuracy is good. For supported apps, the pressure sensitivity works well. Not all apps support palm rejection. And also, to get the best performance for palm rejection, it's best to turn off the multi-gesture function on the iPad.

The only downside for the PixelPoint is that it doesn't work at all without battery power.

The other thing I have to point out is, this stylus is quite expensive. Overall, for drawing purposes, I'm reasonably satisfied. But it's really pricey.

I would rate this 4.5 out of 5.

Availability

You can find the Adonit Jot Touch with PixelPoint and check out more reviews on Amazon at these pages below:

Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de | Amazon.fr | Amazon.it | Amazon.es | Amazon.co.jp