I would like to use a Surface Pro 3 pen with another tablet.

Anonymous
2014-06-26T02:23:55+00:00

Hi everyone!

I'm going to try out the Surface Pro 3 soon, but I think that N-trig pen is cool, especially the click the top to open One Note feature I saw when it was introduced.

I've done a bit of research and found out the reason the Surface Pro 3 switched from Wacom to N-trig technology was to make the device thinner as the Bluetooth technology used by the pen eliminated the need for a special digitizing layer on the screen. This led me to believe that the pen would be compatible with any Bluetooth supported Windows tablet. Can anyone confirm this is true and whether purchasing the new Surface Pen is worth my money?

I'm asking this because I'm a little annoyed with the performance of the Wacom digitizer on my own tablet (which is not a Surface) and was thinking that a Bluetooth operated pen, which does not require this special internal hardware to be fitted into the device, would make an appropriate replacement and/or backup in case the Wacom fails to work at all. Better still, I'd love to see the click to open One Note feature functional on my unit as well. What do you say?

Appreciate your advice, as always!

CSD Surface Tester.

Surface | Accessories | Surface Pen

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Anonymous
2014-06-26T05:38:09+00:00

That is the reason why to check the specs on the pen.  The particular pen for the Surface Pro 3 only.  The pen itself functions in a dual mode capability but still needs power to do it.  It is classed as a "mechanical" pen because it has electronic components.

The two button batteries pre-installed in the top of the pen functions the Bluetooth connection.  The main battery actually communicates with the pen's driver installed in the tablet to work with the touchscreen.  No digitizer is needed.

If it was a generic pen, you would have an installation disk to install a driver for the pen and that drivers mates with the touchscreen along with adding it as a Bluetooth 4.0 device.

Now, if the Bluetooth connection fails, the pen will still function similar to a stylus where the driver will use the touchscreen like a digitizer surface.  The Bluetooth connection is for software control mainly.

It is a little complex but is a great concept in my thought.  You eliminate hardware (digitizer) and emulate that hardware with software (driver).  Believe it or not, a network adapter and a dial-up modem have been working in that fashion for years; where the driver was actually the modem (simulated hardware) and the hardware (interface card) was just a circuit and connection point.

Right now, you can get Bluetooth and WiFi adapters just slightly bigger than a USB plug.  There is only a very small chip in those and rely on the driver to do the rest.

This pen operates in the same fashion.  Since the driver for it is built in, it cannot be used with any other tablet and this particular model was designed solely for the Surface Pro 3.

Now, like I said, you can get a generic pen (probably from N-Trig) from their web site.  That one will include an installation disk and will work with any tablet that has a touchscreen and Bluetooth 4.0 adapter.  You can't with this particular model.

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-06-27T23:40:58+00:00

    That is only a theory and not worth wasting any money on one to find out.  You won't find monitors being advertised as to what touchscreen controller they have and you have to dig around and research to even find one.

    Not worth it but you can get a pocket projector and watch a larger image while you write/draw on the tablet.

    What are you talking about here? I don't believe there are monitors out there that accept stylus pen input using technologies like Wacom or N-trig, and even if you can find one, it alone is probably going to cost about as much as the most expensive Surface Pro 3 model.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-06-27T23:34:28+00:00

    Let me add that wherever occasional dead spots appear on my tablet, it only affects the Wacom pen, not the finger touch digitizer. That's one of the great things about separate touch and pen digitizers, and one of the reasons Windows 7 gave their users the option to turn off finger touch input on their Tablet PCs - it disabled the finger touch digitizer but did not affect the Wacom EMR field. Not sure if N-trig is able to do the same thing because the same digitizer registers both pen and finger input.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-06-27T18:44:10+00:00

    That is only a theory and not worth wasting any money on one to find out.  You won't find monitors being advertised as to what touchscreen controller they have and you have to dig around and research to even find one.

    Not worth it but you can get a pocket projector and watch a larger image while you write/draw on the tablet.

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-06-27T18:21:46+00:00

    If the external monitor was using the same N-Trig Controller as the SP3 then yes the pen would work, but you would be limited to a 15.6" LCD

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