With the official demise of the Venue 8 Pro, I have been keeping my eyes peeled for an intriguing detachable 2-in-1 device with a good stylus. Also, it needs to be larger than the Venue 8 Pro. For my purposes, eight inches is too small for note taking.
Obviously, Microsoft’s Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 are the market definers. Even the Surface Pro 3, though it’s over a year old, has compelling features. The Surface 3 is an interesting option, too, being slightly smaller. From HP, there is the Pavilion x2 Detachable 12-b096ms. Huawei and Samsung have also recently released 2-in-1 devices, the Matebook and Galaxy TabPro S respectively.
From my perspective, though, apart from the Pavilion x2, these things get pretty expensive really quickly. For example, the Surface Book, which thoughtfully includes a keyboard and stylus, starts at $1,349 for a Core i5 with a 128GB SSD and 8GB of RAM. To be honest, that’s probably all the computing power I anticipate needing, for now, but $1,349 is far more than I want to spend. Especially for a device that’s had a spotty reliability record. (If you really want to, you can go hog wild and max the thing out with a Core i7, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD, resulting in a ……. $3,199 price tag. Still cheaper than the gold Apple Watch, though, so…)
2-in-1 Accessories Add Up
The rest of the devices, though? They’re all missing some key accessories. And they aren’t cheap to acquire.
- Surface Pro 4 Base Model (Core m3, 128GB SSD, 4GB RAM, 12.3″ screen)
- $899 starting price (oddly enough, the Core i5 model is currently on sale at the Microsoft Store for $849)
- Stylus (Surface Pen) Included
- +$130 — Surface Pro 4 Type Cover
- Real World Total: $1,030
- Surface Pro 3 Remaining New Model (Core i7, 512 GB, 8 GB RAM, 12″ screen)
- $1,949 starting price (all other models are out of stock)
- Surface Pen included
- +$130 — Surface Type Cover
- Real World Total: $2,080(!!!)
- Surface Pro 3 Refurbished Model (Core i7, 512GB, 8GB RAM, 12″ screen)
- $1,599 starting price (all other models are out of stock)
- Surface Pen included
- +$130 — Surface Type Cover
- Real World Total: $1,730
- Surface 3 (Atom x7, 128GB SSD, 4GB RAM,
- $599 starting price
- Office 365 included for one year
- +$60 Surface Pen
- +$130 Surface Type Cover
- Real World Total: $790
- Pavilion x2 (Core m3, 128GB SSD, 4GB RAM, 12″ screen)
- $449 starting price
- Keyboard included
- +$60 Active Pen
- Real World Total: $509
- Huawei MateBook (Core m3, 128GB SSD, 4GB RAM, 12″ screen)
- $699 starting price
- Free Keyboard (limited time offer, normally it’s $129)
- +$59 MatePen (which includes a laser pointer, so that’s pretty neat)
- Real World Total: $758
- Galaxy TabPro S (Core m3, 128GB SSD, 4GB RAM, 12″ screen)
- $749 starting price (currently on sale)
- Keyboard included
- $80 Galaxy TabPro Pen
- Real World Total: $829
By the time I’ve made the device usable for my wants, I will have spent more than I think is warranted. Except for the HP Pavilion x2. I think $500 plus change for a detachable 2-in-1 with a good-enough processor (more on that later, but I’m wary of the Atom processors given how sluggish the Venue 8 Pro became once I updated to Windows 10.)
Stylus Technology Matters
But I can’t bring myself to pull the trigger on the Pavilion. It isn’t because it isn’t a really compelling piece of hardware. Yes, maybe it’s slightly heavier and thicker than the other offerings. And yes, perhaps the speakers on the sides might look a little…wonky. Those factors don’t matter as much to me, though. What I’m most concerned about is the stylus’s digitizing technology. From what I could gather, it was either home-grown by HP, or used Synaptics technology, which is what Dell used on the V8P. Given how incredibly unreliable the V8P’s stylus was, I can’t justify spending $500 on something to have it become essentially worthless out of the gate.
Instead, I really wanted something that used N-Trig’s or Wacom’s technology. They have solid reputations, and aren’t likely to conk out on me while trying to take notes during a client meeting.
Where Are All the 2-in-1 Devices with Stylus Support?
Until this past weekend, which I’ll get to later, a 2-in-1 didn’t seem like something I was going to include in my work routine any time soon. The utter lack of easily findable information on whether a particular device supports stylus input is another barrier.
The Microsoft Store’s website does a great job of aggregating a nice collection of 2-in-1s which are part of the Signature Edition program. That is, the machines purchased through that program do not have any junk (other than the stuff included as part of Windows 10) preinstalled. What the site utterly fails to do, other than for the Surface line of machines, is tell you whether a given device supports stylus input. Even Amazon, which has a fine dedicated 2-in-1 section, does not include stylus support as a filter. There are options for operating system (including Windows XP), activity (Gaming, Business, Personal), display size, processor type, RAM size, number of CPU Cores, hard drive size and type, weight, number of USB 3.0 ports, WLAN standard, battery life, graphics type, graphics processor, optical storage, flash storage size, wireless internet connectivity, display technology, brand, display resolution, power consumption, and CPU speed. But stylus support? Not an option.
It would be nice if there was a repository of which machines have active stylus support, but there really doesn’t seem to be one. Not easily findable at least. For that, you need to run a Google or Bing search on each individual machine, and hope that the manufacturer’s website tells you the answer. Even then, though, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to learn what digitizer technology is being used. In the end, you have to make do the best you can.
