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In this article, I give you my Wacom Bamboo Tip review with specs included.

It spend time this is the Wacom Bamboo tip. This is a new pen from Wacom. Welcome to the folks who those are you’re into art already know this. Make the Wacom Cintiq lines that’s on my bucket list and the best thing ever if you’re an artist to draw on drawing pen displays the walk of mobile studio pro.

They also make the digitizers a Wacom yesterday ES digitizer is used in recent Dell two and ones Lenovo is all that sort of thing so you get the idea. But they also make some handy dandy stuff for those of you who have just a capacitive display.

Now I know some of you write to me you message me on Twitter and you say oh I bought the wrong laptop or I bought this phone and is there any kind of pen that I can use for it. And usually it’s just all that old fat capacitive stylus which is just really nasty. So the nice thing about this one is this a one point nine millimeter tip.

So it’s a lot more fine tip. If it feels and looks like one of those active digitizer pens. However it’s still capacitive so we’re gonna find out how well it works now. So the bamboo tip is a capacitive stylus.

This is not for those products that already have an active digitizer because it’s redundant and well inferior to an active digitizer ie surface pro with intrigue digitizer Wacom AES in the Lenovo thinkpad yoga on the ipad pro and the Apple pencil.

If you’ve got one of those devices you want to use pins that were meant for them because they’re gonna be better in all respects. But for those who have bought a device and say like a dell inspiron 5000 that we’ve been a test this on or more aptly what they aim this at is Android and ios users say your regular ipad non pro model your your iphone your Android tablet or phone.

This is a driverless non bluetooth device that you just well charge it up and it works. So that’s kind of nice no fussing with Bluetooth non no hokey-pokey no clunky things going on. And it looks pretty classy and it said for $50 right. This looks nice it’s metal barrel pen.

And the tip at one point nine millimeters certainly is a lot more precise in your average and this is just your basic capacitive stylus which is gee this is like trying to write with a crayon in comparison it’s just not so great. So how does this work. It has an on/off button on the side which is recess and you’re not going to press this by accident.

And you press it quickly once and to turn it off and it’ll blink twice an amber if you want to turn it on. Press it and it goes green. Now it will go to sleep to save battery power when if you just leave it be here and you’re not doing anything which is nice.

How do you charge it. Right up top here there’s a little rubber cover and there’s a micro USB port and it comes with a little cable here. And they say that you get about two hours of use time on a charge. Which is decent it’s not as good as the quadruple a power and active pens that we’ve looked at but that’s not too bad.

This is an interesting thing. Usually capacitive ones do not have any power. I think they’re doing it to amping to amp the level of capacitance or conductivity so that they can use the smaller tip here and still have the thing work.

By the way the nibs are replaceable on this and Wacom does sell them on their site. So switch here is in case you find that it’s a little jumpy when you’re writing. Mostly they say that would be for the ipad pro. Again I would really spend the money for the pencil if you’ve already bought the expensive ipad pro to get the best writing experience but that’s what that little switch is for.

So how well does it work. Well here we have an iphone 8 plus and again no software installation no pairing no nothing is required and I’m using sketchbook Pro application here. And that’s fantastic and I can actually see because sketchbook Pro supports pressure sensitivity even with your finger I’m pressing harder the lines getting darker.

That you can even get something like a little bit of pressure sensitivity here. This is about the best experience here and on Android phones that you’re going to get. But still I’m seeing the lines sometimes lagging behind enough following so much.

The big caveat here is there’s no palm rejection. That means you can’t rest your hand on the screen at the same time. And I do that see it’s no longer writing because it’s confused is about what the contact point is.

That’s a drawback with all capacitive pins because your hand is also capacitive so it doesn’t really know what to do about that. But it’s not too bad if you just want to use this as a big note pad say you’re an iPhone person but you really really like that Galaxy Note 8 note-taking feature this is adequate certainly for taking notes.

And it’s better than drawing with your finger I’ll give it that it most certainly is. Even though yeah it’s yet not as good as an active digit. Now we have Adobe Photoshop sketch on the essential phone and Android phone right here. And again no pairing no Bluetooth no nothing and that’s how it writes.

It’s a little bit harder to get the e say for example on this. It’s it’s minimizing my strokes a little bit. Well that’s not the greatest thing in the world. So I switch over to brush like. Now if you’re doing artwork actually this is a little bit of a nicer experience. It’s got pretty nice flow here and well we could do an abstract tree really quick well not really so much but you know you get the idea.

That’s a little bit better. As a writing tool here yeah. You know it’s gonna vary a little bit from phone to phone when it comes to Android 2 depending on the display because the different displays are different levels of capacitance.

Just for giggles this is the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 instead of using the s-pen we’re gonna use this pen and see how well it does. So that’s not too bad. I’m trying to draw a little highlight on the mountain there. Again it’s not tracking real perfectly if you’re gonna do artwork.

And the tilt of the pen can really throw it off. This is a pen that you want to use kind of upright more so if you wanted to draw underneath the tip. And I’ve noticed in general with laptops too that have active digitizers this actually works a little bit better than with ones that are just capacitive touchscreen only.

So there you have it. So just again so you can see the variability between devices here. But it certainly is better than trying to draw with your finger. This is really oh that’s terrible that’s a mess. So how about Android tablets.

This is a Samsung Galaxy Tab s2 this a previous generation it has no active pen support. And this is Walken’s own bamboo paper application. Which is a pretty nice application actually for note-taking or for drawing too. So this one tracks really well. The most awkward thing here is I’m trying to rest my hand on the frame so I don’t put my hand on the glass.

And let’s see if I can do a little sketch. Oh that’s interesting it’s been doing the line. It’s not too bad can usually missing. Let’s joke. But if I rest my hand on here it’s all I’m not going to work it also. Again that’s just the challenge of anything as capacitive and it’s just gonna go out to lunch for a little bit before it comes back again.

No pressure sensitivity going on here but I did again it’s certainly better than doing this. And how about if we switch to well just your basic five dollar what at the local electronic store fat tape stylus. Not a whole lot better there.

In fact it’s a little bit worse it’s a little bit more awkward for drawing because I can’t be very precise with this tip. So you do get precision from that fine tip and that helps. So how about laptops. This is where I know a lot of you are interested in these kind of products because you bought a laptop and maybe you’re even misled by the salesperson.

You thought it had an active pen and digitizer and it doesn’t. Well this is a Dell Inspiron 13 5000 series laptop it does not have an active digitizer. We’ve got Autodesk sketchbook Pro program here again. And once again you’re gonna have to not touch the screen while you’re working.

So let’s just test out noting. This is not a real great solution here. And the Dell XPS 13 and various other laptops to try the LG Graham 15 the capacitive displays and this are not really working so one. You could do a better job with your finger here.

Probably has to do with the amount of power that’s actually required to do anything. So let’s try it with this one. As you can see still not so great. So capacitor pens in general that are not using Bluetooth are not a great alternative yet for these.

And even the Bluetooth ones have their drawbacks. You really just better off getting something that was built with Windows ink capabilities built in whether it’s wakame yes walking EMR entering any of those active pens.

So that’s the Wacom Bamboo tip. As capacitive stylus Azure pens go this is the best that I’ve seen yet as good as it gets. No drivers needed for installation just charge it plug and play go. And that part’s pretty nice. The lack of palm rejection the usual problems of capacitive pens and generally speaking no pressure sensitivity.

Though some iPad apps or iPhone apps might actually give some degree of a sensation of pressure sensitivity. In general if you got stuck with a device that doesn’t have an active digitizer and pen and you really wish it did but you can’t replace the device this $50 pen certainly is about as good as it’s going to get right now.