Apple Pencil For iPad Pro 9.7 Review: Taking Notes Is Cool Again

The Apple Pencil and the iPad Pro are bringing back note-taking and doodling—for a huge huge price, that is.

Since the dawn of smartphones and tablets, note-taking has started to become a thing of the past. During meetings, interviews, conferences, and workaday tasks such as making a shopping list, the regular smartphone-user will tend to just hammer away on her device instead of going through the hassle of the pen and paper. Let’s face it. While a handful still cling on to the traditional pen and paper, hardbound planners and notebooks are just now a thing of the past. Even in college, most of the students would rather bring a handy tablet or laptop to class to take notes than carry loads of notebooks color-coded for its subject.

Apple has been largely instrumental to this change. And with the entrance of the Apple 9.7-inch iPad Pro in the market, more and more users are ditching their non-virtual life to compress their work and play in the small but steady device.

A lot of users who have switched to the 9.7-inch iPad Pro revel in its genius, its speed, and its overall almost-perfection in terms of a handy smartphone-cross-laptop. Among the best things pointed out with the iPad Pro 9.7 are its unimaginable power despite its size, the up-to-grade camera, speedy new chip, the true tone display, and even its ability to shoot 4K videos.

But what we love the most about the new 9.7-inch iPad Pro from Apple is the new Apple Pencil. Yes, you heard it right. Stylus pens are a thing of a past. Apple is bringing back the charm of the good ol’ pencil with the Apple Pencil, which launched almost seven months back. With the arrival of the 9.7-inch iPad Pro, it seems the need (and want) for the Apple Pencil is steadily growing.

Apple users who are coming into contact with the Apple Pencil are spawning terrific reviews for the pencil, since its the most responsive stylus that has yet to come in contact with an Apple product. While we had the Cosmonaut for the iPad for so long already, the Apple Pencil just feels so right—well it helps that it was created by the same people who built the iPad Pro.

Watch TechCrunch Editor and Chief, Matthew Panzarino, go hands on with the new Apple Pencil for the iPad Pro.

Arguably, the Apple Pencil can almost mimic the feeling of jotting down notes on a piece of paper. Writing with an Apple Pencil feels exactly like writing on an iPad (which feels like writing on a piece of glass), but the definiteness of the strokes just brings back the charm of jotting down notes, creating diagrams, and doodling while you attempt to listen to a speaker at a conference or a teacher.

Dan Moren atMacWorld is one of the people who was lured by Apple to test the magic of the Apple Pencil for the Ipad Pro 9.7. And he admits that it is a great product for another great and expensive Apple product. But while the overall writing experience with the Apple Pencil on an iPad Pro is as cathartic as writing with the traditional pen and paper, it’s only halfway there.

If you’re going digital, you might as well go all-out digital. The Apple Pencil for the iPad Pro has forgotten (or overlooked) the fact that a lot of devices and apps are luring cathartic writers to using the stylus and tablet because of handwriting recognition. For example, OneNote and Evernote are at least trying to make an effort at handwriting recognition, developing ways to digitize handwriting and make it searchable like text. The creations and notes created with the Apple Pencil on the iPad Pro saves it as an image rather than a text, so you are unable to make a quick search for a lost text somewhere in your doodle. But this is just getting very particular about the power of the Apple Pencil. If you’re not jotting down novel-length texts, then you’re fine.

In terms of drawing, The Guardian talks to illustrator Chloe Cush who tested out the Apple Pencil for the iPad Pro. Of course, it was only expected that the Apple Pencil will not be able to replace the power of the Wacom tablet in terms of professional digital illustration. But for starters or hobbyists, the Apple Pencil will suffice just fine. You will especially be fond of the Pigment by Pixite app, which is an adult coloring book that lets you be a child again or just burn some time coloring black and white line arts—and it’s very therapeutic, too, mind you.

YouTuber Artismia test drives the Apple Pencil for his drawing in the following video.

At the end of the day, the biggest and only real qualm we have about the Apple Pencil is that it is only compatible with the 12.9 and 9.7-inch iPad Pro units. So if you want to try out the Apple Pencil for yourself, which already comes at $99, then you’ll have to shell out another $599 or more to purchase the iPad Pro itself.

Do you think the iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil are worth it? Let us know in the comment box below.

[Featured image via Apple]