iPad- and iPhone-compatible styluses have made big leaps since Ten One Design first introduced its Pogo Stylus years ago. In the beginning, the styluses had foam tips, allowing them to communicate with capacitive Multi-Touch displays. This design was followed by soft rubber bulbs, which all but became the norm, and to an extent, still are. Then Adonit came on the scene with its Jot lineup, featuring metal tips with plastic discs at the end; to date, these are still our favorite styluses. Now Lynktec is offering its TruGlide Pro Precision Stylus ($30), a nice-looking writing tool most notable for its microfiber tip.
It’s currently available in either matte black with a slate silver tip, or slate silver with a matte black tip.
At 4.75” long, the anodized aluminum TruGlide Pro isn’t as long as an average pen, and is about 0.75” shorter than Adonit’s same-priced Jot Pro with the cap screwed onto the back. Lynktec’s pen doesn’t have a cap to protect its tip, but there aren’t pieces that can fall off like Adonit’s plastic disc, so it’s not quite as important here. The back end does have a tight clip, allowing it to be attached to pockets or straps. Overall, a pretty straightforward design.
The differentiator here is the tip. A removable bulb of microfiber strands, it can be unscrewed and replaced with an upcoming “conductive silk artsist paintbrush tip.” Like rubber-tipped options, it’s squishy, compressing when pressed against the screen of your device.
The company says the material is “precise, firm, and highly responsive,” while supposedly lasting longer than rubber tips. We found it to write well, requiring just a bit of pressure to get started. It doesn’t allow the kind of precision that Adonit’s styluses do, but we found ourselves able to write pretty small. We appreciate that it doesn’t have the same kind of drag that rubber-tipped pens do.
While not as strong of a contender as Jot Pro, TrueGlide Pro is certainly a better stylus than then the dime-a-dozen rubber-bulbed models that proliferate the market today.
