Why You Can Trust CNET Jot Touch review: Adonit pressure-sensitive Jot Touch stylus is a smooth iPad operator
A pressure-sensitive iPad stylus for fluid sketching.
Adonit, makers of the stylus shipped by Adobe as part of its Ink and Slide bundle, incorporates the same fine-point, pressure-sensitive capacitive technology in the Jot Touch with Pixelpoint. With a sleek design, 2,048 levels of sensitivity, and well-implemented connectivity, the Jot Touch is a great creative accessory for your Bluetooth 4-compatible .
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
The stylus comes in black or black and white, and costs $100 (£80, about AU$145).
Roughly the same size as a desktop stylus, the Jot Touch has a more uniform shape than the Wacom Creative Stylus 2 (its main competitor). The point of the nib is a little bigger than the Wacom's -- 3.17mm compared with 2.9mm -- and the stylus is a couple of millimeters shorter and fatter, as well as about 0.1 oz/4 g lighter. None of those results in a significantly different feel between the two, however. (And they seem to have the same roll characteristics when set on a flat surface, for what it's worth.)
The Jot Touch has a rubberized grip with two buttons. They're relatively flush with the exterior, but I still find it easy to distinguish them by feel and there's sufficient clicky feedback. It feels well-balanced and comfortable to hold for extended periods for both sketching and note-taking.
To charge the stylus, you stand it on its end on the provided USB dongle; the magnetized end holds it in place, and does it well. It's clever, but an imperfect system, since that accessory is bound to get lost because the Jot Touch doesn't ship with a case, only the cumbersome plastic packaging it comes in. A replacement will cost you $15 (directly converted £9.70, about AU$22).
A stylus is only as good as its app support, and because of its relative age -- it shipped in July 2014 -- I expected more compatible applications, though many of the big ones are represented. There aren't a lot of art apps that overlap between it and the Wacom: Zen Brush, Concepts (no palm rejection), Adobe Illustrator Draw and Adobe Photoshop Sketch. (CS2's Adobe Draw support seems to be as-yet in name only, however.) The other notable art app it supports is Procreate, though without palm rejection, as well as Adonit's own Forge . Note-taking notables include Goodnotes 4, Noteshelf and Penultimate. You can find the complete list of supported apps here. The Adobe apps recognize it and offer the Creative Cloud perks like the pen-tip menus.
Using the stylus feels very fluid, and it produces strokes as you'd expect them to emerge, with no lag. Once you find the appropriate setting for your grip style, tracing and writing have very little annoying offset from the perceived nib location. The friction level feels just right.
All that said, the operational experience feels quite similar to that of the Creative Stylus 2, and the pressure-sensitivity response seems to be as well, with comparable stroke densities for given settings. Battery life and charging time seems comparable as well, though your mileage may vary (it's rated for 11 hours of continuous use and a month in sleep mode). It does seem to connect slightly faster, however.
As a stylus, the Adonit Jot Touch with Pixelpoint has excellent design and features. But since the CS2 is cheaper ($80, £65, AU$100), and comes with both a case and spare nibs, it seems like a slightly better value.