When we first reviewed the Apple Pencil in 2015, it was a breakthrough: the best Bluetooth stylus we'd ever seen—designed exclusively for the iPad Pro.
More than two years later, the Pencil ($99; $89 for schools) now works with the $329 sixth-generation iPad, but it hasn't changed.
The stylus is still great for artists and professionals doing serious work on their iPads.
But it has some quirks that have gotten less charming with time.
It's still the best stylus for the iPad and iPad Pro, and remains our Editors' Choice, but we'd like to see a design upgrade.
Design, Pairing, and Charging
The Pencil ($94.00 at Amazon) measures 6.875 inches long and weighs a mere 0.64-ounce.
It's a smooth, white, plastic cylinder with a matte gray plastic tip and a removable rear cap with a Lightning jack under it.
The tip screws off in case it needs to be replaced, revealing a small metal post.
The Pencil is round, but fortunately, because it's weighted, it doesn't roll quite as easily as it looks like it should.
That said, it rolls a lot more easily than we'd like.
When we had a sixth-grader use the Pencil, she knocked it off the table and it rolled away into an awkward location under a desk.
An avid capacitive stylus user, she also complained that the Pencil was too long for her small hand.
In the box you get the Pencil itself, an adapter that lets you charge it from a standard Lightning cable (instead of directly through your iPad), and a replacement tip.
Pairing is effortless: Just plug the Pencil briefly into your iPad's Lightning port, and it's paired.
It has to be paired to work; it isn't a standard capacitive stylus.
The Pencil itself has no battery-life indicators; you'll find that information on your iPad's screen.
To charge the Pencil, you remove the back cap and stick it into the Lightning port on the bottom of your iPad.
This creates a very awkward scene, with the Pencil sticking out of the iPad at a right angle.
Fortunately, you can also use the included adapter to charge it with a standard Lightning cable.
There is, however, nowhere to store the cap from the back of the Pencil while it's charging, which makes it too easy to lose.
Apple says you can get 15 minutes of use with 30 seconds of charge, and 12 hours of use out of a full charge.
In testing, a 5-minute charge took me to about 25 percent.
I got to a full charge in about 25 minutes.
Performance
As a bonafide Apple accessory, the Pencil's broad compatibility is one of its great strengths.
Pretty much every major creative and note-taking app for the iPad works with the Pencil now, including Apple's suite of iWork apps.
Unlike with third-party styli, you don't have to set up the apps or dig into settings menus, either: It just works.
The matte tip has a little bit of drag over the iPad's screen, but not much.
In an ideal world, you'd have different tips with different amounts of drag.
I also wish the back end of the Pencil worked as an eraser, the way the FiftyThree Pencil does.
The Pencil isn't just pressure sensitive, it's also tilt sensitive, so you can make broad strokes the way you would with an actual pencil.
That worked very well in the sketch app Procreate.
In Procreate, Evernote, and Sketches, the Apple Pencil proved to be more accurate than the FiftyThree Pencil, most notably in making more precise, detailed edits and changes.
It also feels much better balanced and more comfortable to hold than the Microsoft Surface Pen.
While the Pencil is a no-brainer for artists, it's also worth buying if you intend to take notes on your iPad.
In both Evernote and OneNote, the Pencil let me take extremely small, detailed notes with perfect palm rejection (which is important on this large a surface), and its balance meant that my hand didn't get tired.
Credit: Leontine Greenberg
Conclusions
The Apple Pencil is still the most precise, accurate tablet stylus available, and an invaluable aid for artists and note-takers working with either the sixth-gen iPad or an iPad Pro.
But I can't help but feel that Apple has lost some oppportunities by not updating it in more than two years.
A rubber loop connecting the back cap to the Pencil; a female, rather than male Lightning jack for charging; and maybe even an eraser function would be small physical changes that would definitely improve the Pencil's usability.
The upcoming Logitech Crayon ($49) could be the answer here.
It uses the same Pencil technology and same fine tip, but it's wider and flatter, so it's less likely to roll.
It also has a less lose-able cap and a female charging jack.
I can't see any advantage the Pencil has over the Crayon, really, which may be why Apple is restricting the Crayon to school purchases only (though you can look for one on eBay when it's available).
For now, though, if your iPad is stylus-compatible and you can afford it, the Pencil is the best stylus to get.
Nothing else really matches it.
If you don't have the cash, try to get hold of a Crayon, or look at the $29.99 Adonit Jot Pro, a non-powered but very accurate and comfortable stylus.
The Bottom Line
The Apple Pencil is the best stylus for the sixth-gen iPad and iPad Pro, but its design could use an upgrade.
