Surface Pro 3 Wavy diagonal lines when inking

How could that digitizer have passed ANY quality checks?

The SP3 is not a 200$ Android tablet with "digitizer", where you could expect some caveats, but a 1500$ workhorse.

If this is hardware related and not possible to fix via drivers, this will kill the device for my Photoshop purposes.

Please do something about it, Microsoft, I just have spent 1500 Euros on it.

I was able reduce jitter using a screen protector (this matte Tech Armor in particular) which increased the friction between the pen and the surface, and brought the experience a bit closer to my previous Wacom tablets.

There aren't too many alternative pen options, but this HTC stylus is also Ntrig and works with the SP3. It has a different feel to it, more friction and perhaps lower activation force. A bit clicky though, and no bluetooth button.

There is also third-party software out there now that allows remapping of the hard/soft buttons on the SP3 as well as the pen (or you can write your own with Autohotkey + EventGhost) and Ntrig has an updated WinTab driver. I guess it sucks that the customer has to work a bit to get something working just to be on par with previous levels, but things seem reasonable enough with inking that I'm keeping my SP3 with its gorgeous screen and aspect ratio.

Can you post a picture of your diagonal lines to see how it looks with the new screen protector?

Looks like the actual jaggedness wasn't reduced as much as I thought by the screen protector. Sorry I didn't save anything before I applied the screen protector, so no way for me to tell how much it is helping, or if. All lines drawn in Onenote over about 5 seconds. No software smoothing. The "tilted" image lines were drawn physically horizontal on a tilted SP3.

I wouldn't say I have very steady hands. A comparison using a random Wacom is provided for reference. The pen line thickness for the Wacom image wasn't the same, apologies, and neither was the screen resolution.

The HTC pen does seem to reduce the jaggedness, at least to my eyes. You can decide for yourself using the blind test image: some of the 7 lines use the HTC pen, some the default SP3 pen.

Here is the answer to which line uses which pen:

HTC pen for lines 2, 5 and 6

I was able reduce jitter using a screen protector (this matte Tech Armor in particular) which increased the friction between the pen and the surface, and brought the experience a bit closer to my previous Wacom tablets.

There aren't too many alternative pen options, but this HTC stylus is also Ntrig and works with the SP3. It has a different feel to it, more friction and perhaps lower activation force. A bit clicky though, and no bluetooth button.

There is also third-party software out there now that allows remapping of the hard/soft buttons on the SP3 as well as the pen (or you can write your own with Autohotkey + EventGhost) and Ntrig has an updated WinTab driver. I guess it sucks that the customer has to work a bit to get something working just to be on par with previous levels, but things seem reasonable enough with inking that I'm keeping my SP3 with its gorgeous screen and aspect ratio.

Can you post a picture of your diagonal lines to see how it looks with the new screen protector?

I was able reduce jitter using a screen protector (this matte Tech Armor in particular) which increased the friction between the pen and the surface, and brought the experience a bit closer to my previous Wacom tablets.

There aren't too many alternative pen options, but this HTC stylus is also Ntrig and works with the SP3. It has a different feel to it, more friction and perhaps lower activation force. A bit clicky though, and no bluetooth button.

There is also third-party software out there now that allows remapping of the hard/soft buttons on the SP3 as well as the pen (or you can write your own with Autohotkey + EventGhost) and Ntrig has an updated WinTab driver. I guess it sucks that the customer has to work a bit to get something working just to be on par with previous levels, but things seem reasonable enough with inking that I'm keeping my SP3 with its gorgeous screen and aspect ratio.

Good to know.

I've been researching this issue 'cause I have to buy a new computer but I also need some compact digitizer screen that I can carry, but I can tell this wavy line issue pulled me down.

There is nothing to do with it. It's not driver problem, it is poor hardware. I have used numerous tablets, screens, mostly Wacom ones. Although my first one was a nice big Trust tablet, that suffered from the same issue. I installed the fresh driver, re-installed over and over again, and in the end I returned the tablet 'cause I thought that was a faulty one, the replacement was the same. They were nice at the shop, gave me back my money and I purchased Wacom. Had been solved.