The Best Stylus for Your iPad

I have a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in fine art for drawing and painting, and I have been using drawing tablets, graphics tablets, and almost every variation of a digital drawing device since 2002. My primary digital drawing platform since 2018 has been a 12.9-inch iPad Pro, and you can often find me at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art sketching with it—using a stylus, of course.

Previous versions of this guide were written by Nick Guy, who evaluated dozens of styluses over the course of a decade.

If you want to draw or sketch on your iPad, take notes, or navigate around apps, a stylus is far more precise than your fingertips. The best styluses offer pressure sensitivity, which is essential for serious drawing or painting on the tablet using apps such as Procreate and Adobe Fresco. A stylus can also be a good option for people who find it physically difficult to use a touchscreen to navigate their iPad.

You probably don’t need a stylus if you use an iPad largely for browsing the web, watching videos, or playing games. But when it comes to taking notes, using a stylus to write is faster and easier for many people than tapping away at the iPad’s screen, especially with iPadOS’s advanced handwriting features. If you don’t like writing by hand, you can use a Bluetooth keyboard or an iPad keyboard case. If you’re looking to create drawings and paintings with your iPad, pressure-sensitive styluses such as the 1st- and 2nd-gen Apple Pencil models can provide an experience closer to using pencils, pens, and paints.

The Logitech Crayon and Adonit SE are compatible with all iPads released since 2018. That isn’t the case with Apple’s offerings—which Apple Pencil you can use depends on which iPad you own. If you’re not sure which model you have, you can find out by checking the back of your iPad or viewing its properties in the About section of its Settings menu.

Here’s a complete list of Apple Pencil compatibility as of June 2024:

We’ve researched hundreds of styluses over the years, and we’ve had hands-on experience with dozens. For this round of testing, we hoped to find a stylus that was just as good as the Apple Pencil but cheaper. Unfortunately, Apple’s styluses are still the only models that offer reliable pressure sensitivity across iPad apps, which is important for drawing and sketching. But even cheap styluses have palm rejection and tilt support, and we think those features are useful enough that every stylus should include them.

On top of that, we evaluate styluses on the following additional criteria:

• Precision: A stylus should write consistently, with regular, predictable spacing. While you’re drawing, the stylus should ink over the same line precisely and repeatedly, and the line on the screen should stick closely to the stylus’s tip without noticeable lag.
• Pressure sensitivity: If you primarily plan to draw and paint with your iPad, limit your search to styluses that include pressure sensitivity. As of early 2024, the only styluses that currently offer fully integrated, universal pressure sensitivity across iPads are the 1st- and 2nd-generation Apple Pencil models. Other styluses advertise pressure sensitivity, but the experience is poor—apps have to support them on a case-by-case basis, and they may also require you to disable iPadOS features such as multitasking gestures. The most popular drawing and painting app on the iPad, Procreate, has completely removed pressure-sensitivity support for non-Pencil styluses, and Adobe’s Fresco also supports Apple Pencil models exclusively.
• Advanced features: Palm rejection and tilt support are key to taking notes on tablets, which are big enough for you to need to rest your hand against the screen while you’re writing. These days, such features can be found in styluses that cost $30 or less, so we don’t recommend styluses without them.
• Comfort: No stylus design is perfect for everyone, but at the very least a stylus shouldn’t hurt to hold. It shouldn’t dig into your skin, it shouldn’t feel too slick or slippery, and it shouldn’t be too heavy or feel imbalanced.
• Resistance: A good stylus offers the right amount of friction between the nib (drawing end) of the stylus and the iPad’s screen. If the nib is too slick, you don’t have the line control that you might get with a pen on a piece of paper. If it’s too sticky, you might make erroneous marks or get sore hands from gripping the stylus more tightly to drag it across the screen.
• Setup process: All of our stylus picks are simple to set up and pair with iPads and don’t require you to tweak settings in iPadOS.

In our most recent tests, we evaluated each stylus’s precision by repeatedly writing sentences closely together in Notes and in Procreate at varying speeds, watching for differences in character spacing and delays in marks drawn. We also did various line tests in Notes and Procreate to determine line stability, as well as to note any unintended hooks appearing on lines drawn close together quickly. Pressure sensitivity is present only in Apple Pencil models; we tested that function in Procreate. Similarly, we tested tilt detection in Procreate, since the results are easiest to see with its assorted pencil-like tools.

Whether you’re a professional artist or an amateur doodler, the Apple Pencil (1st generation), Apple Pencil (2nd generation), and Apple Pencil Pro are the only full-featured options for drawing or painting. The right Pencil for you depends on which iPad you have, but regardless of which of these versions you buy, the Apple Pencil is the industry standard for iPad styluses, largely because it’s the only one that provides pressure sensitivity across every app that supports the feature.

However, Apple Pencil features and compatibility can be confusing. Currently Apple has four Pencil models, and the only version that works on every iPad released since 2018 is the USB-C Apple Pencil, released in late 2023. But because that version lacks pressure sensitivity, we don’t recommend it for people who want to use a stylus to draw on their iPad.

The 1st- and 2nd-gen Apple Pencils and the Pencil Pro all fully support pressure sensitivity. This makes drawing on an iPad feel natural. Pressure sensitivity is key to replicating a more natural feeling while you’re drawing on a tablet, and as of mid-2024, the most popular art programs on the iPad, including Procreate, offer full support only for Apple’s 1st- and 2nd-gen Pencils and the Pencil Pro. That pressure sensitivity, along with tilt detection, produces a smooth and refined level of feedback that makes drawing and painting feel mostly natural for anybody who has just about any drawing experience at all. We also like the 2nd-gen Pencil’s double-tap functionality, which is useful in programs such as Procreate, where the action lets you switch between a brush and the eraser tool. The Apple Pencil Pro includes all of the 2nd-generation Pencil’s features and adds haptic feedback, plus “squeeze” and “barrel roll” functionality. (More on those in a minute.)

It just works (if it’s compatible). Every Apple Pencil model syncs easily with the iPads it’s compatible with. When you’re using the 1st-gen Apple Pencil, connecting it via a Lightning cable to your entry-level iPad (or via the Lightning–to–USB-C adapter for a 10th-gen iPad) syncs it up, and it stays that way until you sync it to another iPad. With the 2nd-gen Pencil and the Apple Pencil Pro, the process is even simpler—the Pencil magnetically attaches and automatically connects to any compatible high-end iPad. Just make sure that you’re buying the stylus that works with your specific tablet: iPads that work with the 1st-gen Pencil don’t support the 2nd-gen Pencil, and vice versa. The Pencil Pro works only with the M4 iPad Pro and M2 iPad Air.

The battery life is great. The 1st- and 2nd-gen Apple Pencil and the Apple Pencil Pro each get approximately 12 hours of battery life on a single charge, hours longer than the battery life of almost any other premium iPad stylus. With the 2nd-generation Pencil and the Pencil Pro, you’ll probably never need to go out of your way to charge at all: Because you attach the stylus to the edge of your iPad when you aren’t using it, and doing so also charges the stylus, only the most extreme usage scenarios are likely to put a meaningful dent in the battery life. The 1st-gen Pencil can charge from zero to 20% in about five minutes.

The experience is just like holding an actual pencil. The Apple Pencil is comfortable enough for most people. Every Pencil is well balanced, though the 2nd-gen version is slightly shorter, much like a wooden pencil that has seen a bit of use in comparison with the 1st-gen model’s longer, brand-new-pencil length. The 2nd-gen Pencil also has a more matte, almost rubbery surface, in contrast to the glossier finish of the 1st-gen device, but this surface offered only a slight improvement in our long-term comfort (and there’s an entire ecosystem of 1st-gen Pencil covers and sleeves). The Pencil Pro is similar in surface feel and size to the 2nd-generation Pencil but is just a bit heavier, though not unpleasantly so.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

All three models are really expensive. The 1st-gen Apple Pencil is $100, and the 2nd-gen Pencil and Pencil Pro each retail for $130; all of them are much pricier than devices from third-party accessory makers. (Apple does make a less expensive Apple Pencil, the $70 3rd-gen version, but it lacks pressure sensitivity, so we don’t recommend it.) If you don’t plan on drawing regularly on your iPad, one of our other picks would be better and cheaper.

The 1st-gen Pencil requires a Lightning cable to charge. Plenty of styluses need to use a cable to charge, but the 1st-gen Pencil’s use of Lightning is particularly annoying in 2024, especially as Apple has finally moved away from its own standard with the most recent iPad. Newly purchased 1st-gen Pencils at least come with the Lightning–to–USB-C adapter, but the end result is the same: a cable dangling out of the bottom of your iPad and connected to your Pencil.

The Pencil’s nib can be a little noisy. Though the Apple Pencil is accurate and comfortable to hold, it can be a little noisier than some other styluses due to the material of the nib it ships with. That nib is more plastic than rubber, so aggressive writing or drawing might produce more clacky noises than you find acceptable. But it won’t scratch your screen: In more than two years of frequent use of a 2nd-gen Apple Pencil with an M1 iPad Pro, I’ve found that the display is still damage-free.

The Pencil Pro’s new features don’t have much use yet. The Pencil Pro’s squeeze functionality and barrel-roll detection are interesting, but right now not many apps are taking advantage of those new features. So far, drawing apps are using the squeeze feature to bring up right-click-like context menus, but the barrel-roll support does little aside from allowing for rotating flourishes while you’re using drawing tools. And currently, these features are locked mainly behind beta versions of apps like Procreate. At some point developers may find useful ways to take advantage of these features, but for now they feel a little unnecessary.

Compatibility is confusing. The 1st-gen Apple Pencil works only with specific iPads, and the 2nd-gen Pencil works only with other specific iPads—neither model is compatible with all of them. Meanwhile, the 10th-gen base-model iPad has a USB-C port and a side magnet but isn’t compatible with the 2nd-gen Apple Pencil. We had hoped that Apple would simplify this confusing lineup, but the Pencil Pro has only made things more complicated, as it works exclusively with brand-new M2 iPad Air and M4 iPad Pro tablets.

If you take notes on an iPad for hours at a time or need a stylus for navigating apps on your iPad, Logitech’s Crayon (USB-C) is a solid option with plenty of features and seven hours of battery life. It feels like a premium stylus in the hand, its palm rejection is solid, and if you need to do some light sketching, it offers fast, accurate performance. But its magnetic-attachment feature doesn’t offer charging—and didn’t play well with our 10th-gen iPad—and as with every non-Apple stylus, it lacks pressure sensitivity, so it’s a bad fit for anyone looking to draw a lot on their tablet.

It’s easy to set up. Getting the Crayon working with your iPad is simple—as long as you don’t have any other styluses already synced to your tablet, you have only to turn on the Crayon, and it should just work. Though Bluetooth setup has gotten considerably less annoying over the years, it’s still nice not to have to deal with that process.

It works with almost every modern iPad. If you own an iPad made since 2018, the Crayon should work with it, regardless of whether it’s an entry-level or higher-performance tablet.

It writes well. In Apple’s Notes app, the Crayon wrote accurately and produced predictable spacing between words and letters. It also sketched quickly and accurately in both Notes and Procreate, even in the absence of pressure sensitivity.

It offers plenty of features for its price. In addition to the simple setup process, the Crayon has pretty good tilt detection that goes beyond a simple, binary “tilt or no tilt” measure, and its palm rejection worked well during our note-taking and sketching tests. Plus, we like this model’s physical power switch.

Like every other non-Apple stylus, it lacks pressure sensitivity. As of early 2024, no non-Apple stylus offers uniform, full-featured, and completely supported pressure sensitivity (though some apps might offer limited support for some styluses on a case-by-case basis), and the Logitech Crayon is no exception. If drawing and painting are your primary use for a stylus, this model is a bad fit.

It doesn’t come with a USB-C cable. More and more accessory makers are forgoing chargers and charging cables in an effort to combat e-waste, which is admirable, but if you don’t have a USB-C cable handy, you’ll need to find one.

If you don’t want to spend more than $30 to take notes or do some light sketching on your iPad, the Adonit SE is a great value. Comfortable to hold and easy to set up, it’s a full-featured stylus that doesn’t skimp on the little things, though its compromises in build quality become more apparent after extended use.

The setup process is easy but opaque. The Adonit SE’s packaging and included manual lack instructions for pairing it to your iPad; I found this confusing initially, until I realized that this stylus has no setup process at all. You just turn on the stylus using a button on the top, and as long as you don’t have any other styluses connected to your tablet, it just works. Once you know this, getting started with the Adonit SE is a snap.

It works with almost every iPad. The Adonit SE works with virtually every iPad released in 2018 or later, including 6th- to 10th-gen iPads and newer models of the iPad Air, iPad mini, and iPad Pro.

It offers a lot of features and perks for the price. The Adonit SE is a surprisingly full-featured budget stylus. It offers decent tilt recognition, palm rejection, and USB-C charging. It writes well (though the nib is even harder than that of the Apple Pencil), and its eight-hour battery life is better than what many more expensive styluses offer. It also comes with a charging cable and a bundle of replacement nibs. You get a lot for your money.

It’s comfortable to use. If the Apple Pencil—or even a regular but slightly heavy pencil—is comfortable for you to use and hold, this stylus should feel almost identical.

But it makes a few cost-cutting compromises. Compared with more expensive styluses, the Adonit SE has some little annoyances that start to add up over time. The power button feels a bit unreliable to press. The USB-C port is protected only by a small rubber plug that I’m pretty sure I lost forever. The magnetized surface of the pen didn’t reliably attach to the side of our 10th-gen iPad—it skipped around unsteadily and eventually sat, only somewhat steadily, hanging off the edge of the tablet. And the SE’s build quality is fine, but it lacks the fit and finish of the Logitech Crayon (USB-C). All of these issues, however, are minor inconveniences that become obvious only when you compare this model against significantly more expensive styluses.

Drawing and painting with physical tools such as pencils, pens, or paintbrushes provides a nearly infinite set of variables to control, usually with your hands. How hard you press with a pencil determines how dark your mark is, and the angle at which you hold a pencil or brush against a surface affects how wide your marks or strokes are, as well as their shape. Art programs on both PCs and tablets have gotten increasingly better at simulating these kinds of interactions with pressure sensitivity and tilt detection, and that makes drawing and painting on an iPad or any other tablet feel more comparable to drawing on paper. It also helps the practice and skills that you develop on one carry over to the other.

In November 2023, Apple introduced the more affordable Apple Pencil (USB-C). Along with USB-C charging and the ability to magnetically attach to compatible iPads, the 3rd-gen Pencil also supports the hover feature, as the 2nd-gen Pencil does on the iPad Pro. The 3rd-gen Pencil costs $80, a good deal less than the 1st- and 2nd-gen versions, but it’s also missing a key feature: pressure sensitivity. In addition, it lacks the magnetic-charging feature of the 2nd-gen Pencil. We tested the Apple Pencil (USB-C), and it does everything it’s supposed to well, but we concluded that most people can get similar results for less. We have seen the Apple Pencil (USB-C) on sale already, however, and we recommend it as an alternative to the Logitech Crayon (USB-C) if you find it for less than that model.

The Hatoku Stylus Pen is Amazon’s most popular iPad stylus as of early 2024, so we tested it. What we found was a stylus nearly identical to our budget pick, the Adonit SE—even the packaging was similar. The Hatoku stylus performs well for an under-$30 option, and we found little to distinguish it from the Adonit model. But Adonit is a bigger brand with more reliable customer support, so we recommend the SE for the same price.

Our previous top pick, the Zagg Pro Stylus, was discontinued and has been replaced by the Zagg Pro Stylus 2. The Pro Stylus 2 offers some nice perks, including Qi charging, a magnetic strip to attach to modern iPads, and the same rubber pointer that made navigating apps with the original Pro Stylus easy. It retails for $80, more than the Logitech Crayon, and it doesn’t draw as well or pair as easily as that stylus. But if you can’t stand the shape of the Crayon, the Zagg Pro Stylus 2 is a good option.

We also tested several other models from Adonit. The Adonit Log’s gimmick is a wooden barrel, but it lacks tilt detection. The Adonit Star, a stylus shaped like a fountain pen, is priced at $50 and omits pressure sensitivity. The Adonit Note+ 2 promises pressure sensitivity, but it isn’t supported in Procreate or Adobe Fresco, and though it also includes palm rejection and tilt detection, owners have reported difficulty getting its Bluetooth functionality to work correctly. The Adonit Pixel similarly promises pressure sensitivity but isn’t supported in popular drawing apps, and it also forces you to turn off gesture-based multitasking in your iPad settings. If you need pressure sensitivity, our top picks provide more features and better reliability.

Adonit’s disc-style styluses, including the Adonit Mini 4 and Adonit Pro 4, can work well, but they’re not for everyone. The clear plastic tip gives you the appearance of greater accuracy, but as with thin-nib styluses, that may not always be the case, especially when you’re writing or drawing quickly. Disc nibs also lack the “give” of a soft tip and offer less resistance against the screen than rubber or mesh, and as a result you must position the nib at the proper angle to write or draw correctly.

JamJake’s Stylus Pen was surprisingly accurate and responsive in our tests, but it doesn’t support tilt detection or pressure sensitivity, and the power toggle is a dealbreaker—the capacitive power button is located where the eraser would be if this were a pencil, and even a soft tap or brush against it can turn the stylus on or off.

The Studio Neat Cosmonaut has a larger body and nib than every other modern stylus we’ve seen. But that bigger size makes it a perfect choice for kids, people who have trouble gripping smaller pens, and anyone who wants the equivalent of a dry-erase marker in their iPad arsenal. With an aluminum body and a rubber coating, it’s a big tool, and although its balance and resistance allow you to do excellent line work, you have to trust in the Cosmonaut’s nib precision—the stylus’s chunky body often blocks your view of the area you’re working on.

The second-generation Meko Universal Stylus is poorly weighted, making it uncomfortable to use.

In our tests, the Ten One Design Pogo felt too flimsy for writing on iPad-size screens.

We tested a number of Elago’s styluses, each of which has a different body but the same too-squishy rubber tip. This group includes the Stylus Grip (our favorite of the bunch, if we had to pick one, but we still don’t recommend it), Stylus Allure Stand, Stylus Ball, Stylus Hexa, Stylus Rustic, and Stylus Slim.

The amPen Hybrid Stylus is about as basic as a cheap stylus gets. It works, but it isn’t special in any way, and you can get something great for just a few dollars more.

This article was edited by Caitlin McGarry and Jason Chen.