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Sep 8, 2013

Digitizer vs Stylus


Example of a digitizer on an Android tablet. (N-Trig technology)

Question
"What is a digitizer pen and what's the difference from a regular stylus?"

My answer:
A digitizer is an electronic device, the stylus is not. An electronic device can be defined as a pen that has it's own electricity, uses magnets, or draws power from an external device in order to function. The digitizer offers things like: hover state, pressure sensitivity [from the pen], multiple buttons, eraser, etc. The stylus offers: an emulation of a mouse/touch click/down. Most pens used on iPads/Android tablets are styluses (Pogo,amPen), but many Windows systems have had styluses... also the now ancient Palm organizers and Pocket PCs known as PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) had styluses. Digitizers are often found in many Windows and some Android systems and they are regularly based on technologies by Wacom, N-Trig, and Samsung's S-Pen.

If you have a choice then I recommend using Wacom based as many of their devices produce better line quality results (in some devices up to 2048 levels of pressure).  Although, at the moment of this writing, N-Trig is about to introduce their next generation digitizer technology (DuoSense Pen 2).

Other pen technologies: Atmel, Synaptics, Hitachi.


Example of a stylus that works on a capacitive screen (these screens emulate a finger touch)

Example of a two button digitizer on a Windows convertible. (Wacom technology)

Example of a digitizer on a Windows convertible. (N-Trig technology)

Example of a digitizer on an Android tablet. (Samsung S-Pen technology)

Example of a stylus on iPad tablet. (What the eff is a "stylaa?")

More info


Go to minute 1:47 and keep watching for details.

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