The Pogo Connect Stylus Brings Pressure Sensitivity To IOS In A Great Way [Review]

Let me just preface this article by saying that, by no means am I an artist nor even call myself good at drawing, but for this review I gave it my best shot. You can be the judge.

When I first received the Pogo Connect, I was quite excited; for a couple of reasons. First off, I love styluses (or, styli) and was excited to have a very premium feeling one, and secondly I was most excited about the pressure sensitivity that this particular stylus offers.

After getting to use it some, it was just as awesome as I expected. Now, you can’t just go out and buy this, connect to your iPad, and expect it to magically work with any and all applications. Unfortunately, it isn’t that simple.

The way that this works is applications have to support it, and fortunately, there is a good selection of applications that do.

When I first opened up the App Store to begin searching for apps, of course what I typed in the search field was “pogo connect,” and, lo and behold, Ten One Design (makers of the Pogo Connect) has an application in the App Store that not only shows you how to use your stylus, but also has a section where you can find all the apps that currently support the stylus.

What I found when opening this is that, in fact, many applications that I have heard of support this. Paper by FiftyThree, SketchBook Pro and SketchBook Ink, Procreate, Adobe Photoshop Touch, Brushes, GoodNotes, and many more.

The way this works is Ten One Design offers a developer SDK to anyone that is interested in implementing this into their application.

After reading over the list, I discovered that I already had a few of the aforementioned applications on my iPad, so I opened them up and got exploring. The one that I ended up using the most was Procreate, a drawing application that I had bought back when it was on sale for some event.

Bringing up my note from earlier, I’m not at artist, but I gave it my best when trying out this stylus. I wanted to see just how accurate it could get. I tested this out, drawing a candle and a rose (I know, random choice), and my girlfriend insisted on drawing a lion, which ended up being a good example of the pressure sensitivity offered by the stylus.

In her lion picture, only one size brush was used, and only one color (aside from her initials). As you can see, however, there are plenty of light and dark lines, some look brighter than others, and that is because of the pressure being used when the lion was being sketched.

It’s obvious that this has a high level of sensitivity, and that is something that is great for those looking to take complete control of their digital artwork. Another place that I believe really shows off the pressure is on my signature found at the bottom of the candle picture (see in slideshow below). You can see the beginning and ends of the lines fade in or out, and some places appear much darker than others.

Now, the pressure sensitivity is great and all (just kidding, it’s quite fantastic), but I must say that another aspect of this stylus that I greatly enjoyed was the build quality. Not only the build quality, but the attention to detail is remarkable.

For starters, it is made of aluminum, the same feeling aluminum that is found on the back of iPads. It feels great in hand, and has a nice grip to it. While it isn’t thin, it isn’t too thick, it feels natural to hold.

Where the attention to detail comes in is with the light that is located on the button that is used to connect to the iPad via Bluetooth (4.0, so only iPad 3rd and 4th generation are supported, with iPad mini support coming soon from supported applications).

With this light, developers are able to create near any color they want, so when using an application such as Procreate, the color will blink to the color of the brush that I have selected. Change the color to red, the light blinks red.

Change it to light green, it blinks light green. I decided to test it, and go from light green to dark green, and there was a noticeable change in the color that the light blinked. Now, while this may be a novelty to some, I thought it was an awesome addition. Developers are also able to access the button and assign certain actions to it.

Overall, after using this stylus to draw random things and take notes using some of the note taking applications that supported it (I chose GoodNotes), I was more than happy with it, and found myself showing everyone how awesome it was because of the pressure sensitivity.

Everyone that I showed was simply in awe, just as I was the first time I tried it out. If you want to be awed at this awesome stylus, you can go here and purchase it for $79.95: Pogo Connect.

I know, $79.95? For a stylus? If you are someone that does digital artwork, or someone that takes plenty of notes and draws pictures inside your notes, I can’t recommend this enough. If you think you have a use for it, get it. It’s just that awesome. Don’t forget to check out the slideshow below with my other drawings and more pictures of the device.

What do you think about this stylus? Do you have one? If so, let us know in the comments