I bought a touch screen and use it as a second monitor. It appears to be a glass-screen capacitive-touch monitor and i was wondering what the best stylus to get for it would be?
I also have a capacitive-touch external monitor.
The answer depends on what you want to do.
I use my styluses where I would otherwise have used my finger or clicked with my mouse for
- touching controls, and
- sketching or writing in MSPaint.
I can use my finger just as well as I can use a stylus for
- touching controls, and
- sketching in MSPaint.
I have not tried using them for writing for four years.
I would need to practice a lot if I starting using them again.
I have a mixture of dirt-cheap styluses & not quite so cheap styluses.
They are all as good as one another. And I have a free one that came with a phone case that is as good as the others.
One draws finer lines than the others. But I have not really found any better use for it in practice.
I would only need to consider an 'active' stylus if I was doing precision drawings of some kind [architectural / engineering designs or fine art].
Active styluses are generally a lot more expensive then the things I use.
Here are the ones I have so you can see for yourself.
The two on the right are the ones with finer points.
- They have the finer points at one end and the normal squashy broader 'points' at the other end.
- They each have a single cap that can be screwed on to either end so I can choose to protect the fine points if I want [the broader ones don't need any protection].
- I managed to jam a pen holder onto the silver one to make it more convenient to have in my jacket pocket.
All the others have broader points.
- All the broader 'points' a some sort of squashy material.
- Some of them are combination biros-styluses.
- The feathered one came free with a phone case.
- The short one came free with something else.
Writing with a stylus takes quite a bit of getting used to.
- You have to hold the stylus almost vertically not at an angle like a pen which makes using it a bit awkward.
- You have to write or draw quite slowly or you get effects like you can see in the [green sample] letter
c in
seconds.
- I started off writing like a child with a giant crayon. I have now progressed to writing 3/8" [1cm] high letters.
- I thought I would also use this to scribble out shopping lists as an alternative to scribbles on bits of paper but I am not competent enough to do this well.
- I have kept some bits of sponge packaging to rest the side of my hand on while I draw or write with any stylus. This stops accidental touches which can create marks in the desired picture or just overwhelm the touchscreen processing so much that not even the intended drawing reaches the screen.
Here are two four years old examples of using a broader one -
I could not find an example of using a finer one and I am so out of practice It took over a minute to produce even this rubbish.
I would need to practice a lot if I needed to start using a stylus again.
All the best,
Denis
