- ESR has launched an Apple Pencil alternative that costs $30
- The Geo Digital Pencil can fast charge and has Find My support
- It lacks many Apple Pencil features, but costs less than half the price
The Apple Pencil is a superb accessory for all the best iPads, but it doesn’t come cheap thanks to its $79 / £79 / AU$139 starting price (which stretches up to $129 / £129 / AU$219 if you want the Apple Pencil Pro). If you’re looking for an alternative pen for your iPad that won’t break the bank, ESR has just introduced a much more wallet-friendly option.
The ESR Geo Digital Pencil is a $30 pen for the iPad that can replicate many of the Apple Pencil’s features. For instance, it comes with tilt sensitivity that lets you easily adjust the thickness of your output by adjusting the pencil’s angle.
As well as that, you can tap the Geo Digital Pencil to quickly interact with your iPad and see the pen’s battery level. That’s similar to the Apple Pencil Pro’s ability to change tools when you tap it and is something that isn’t available on the entry-level Apple Pencil.
ESR says the Geo Digital Pencil is compatible with a range of iPads, including the iPad Air with M2 chip, the M4 iPad Pro, the 10th-generation iPad, and the iPad mini with A17 Pro chip.
What’s missing?
One of the Geo Digital Pencil’s most useful features is its Find My integration. This will allow you to connect it to you iPhone and locate it using the Find My app. Find My is an incredibly useful tool for Apple devices, so it’s encouraging to see ESR built it into its iPad pencil.
To charge the pen, you can connect it to a power outlet using a USB-C cable. This enables fast charging, which will get it to full battery power within 30 minutes. You can also magnetically snap the pencil to your iPad, but doing so will not charge it, which is something you can do with the Apple Pencil Pro (but not the regular Apple Pencil).
At $30, it’s unsurprising that ESR’s device lacks some of the Apple Pencil’s features, and it also goes without the hover feature that lets you preview a pen mark before you make it with Apple’s device. You also don’t get the barrel roll, haptic feedback or squeeze functionality of the Apple Pencil Pro, although that pen does cost over four times the price of the ESR Geo Digital Pencil.
Still, at less than half the price of the standard Apple Pencil, you might decide that it’s worth taking a punt on ESR’s alternative – we’ve certainly had some joy previously with more affordable rivals.
We don’t yet know how it compares to the Apple Pencil in terms of precision and latency, but if it turns out to be a solid device, it could take its place among the best Apple Pencil alternatives.
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alexblake.techradar@gmail.com (Alex Blake)
