If you’ve been looking to buy an Apple Pencil for your iPad, you’ve hitherto been limited by the kind of iPad you’re rocking. If you have an iPad mini, iPad Air or iPad Pro with a USB-C port, you’d have to go with the second-generation Pencil, which is a fantastic but expensive sketch tool. If you had an iPad with a Lightning port, you’d be stuck with the first-gen model, which you charge by plugging into the iPad’s port—turning it into a giant popsicle.
And if you have a tenth-generation iPad, you’d have to get the first-gen Pencil and use a dongle to plug it up to the tablet’s USB-C port, which is the dumbest thing imaginable.
Thankfully, you won’t have to suffer through that misery any longer. Apple has just introduced a new, more affordable Apple Pencil that works with all iPads with a USB-C port—yes, including that tenth-gen iPad. At RM399, it’s RM200 cheaper than the second-gen Pencil and RM80 cheaper than even the first-gen model.
The new Pencil looks identical to the second-gen version save for a cap at the top. Pull it up and you’ll reveal a USB-C port on the flat side, enabling you to plug it up to an iPad (or a charger) via cable. This means you no longer insert it directly to the iPad, so no more popsicle. Like the second-gen Pencil, you can also attach it magnetically to a new-shape iPad mini, iPad Air or iPad Pro.
Being that this is a cut-price Apple product, however, there’s a catch. There is no way for the new Pencil to charge magnetically on the aforementioned iPads, so it just sits at the top of the tablet doing nothing (Apple does say the Pencil enters sleep mode to save battery). You also lose out on the second-gen Pencil’s double-tap function that allows you to switch tools on the fly, although it does at least support the iPad Pro M2‘s hover feature.
But the biggest drawback for the artists who make up a sizeable portion of Apple Pencil buyers is that while it does still have tilt detection, it’s no longer pressure sensitive—something even the first-gen Pencil supported. This means you won’t be able to adjust the opacity or thickness of your pen/brush strokes by pressing down harder or softer, making the USB-C Pencil less than ideal for drawing and painting. Unfortunately, this means the RM599 second-gen Pencil is still the default choice for those in the creative field.
