Should you buy a Surface Pen for the Surface Pro 6?

Should you buy a Surface Pen for the Surface Pro 6?

Best answer: Yes! But only if you think you'll be doing a lot of note-taking, digital art, or sketching. If you're planning to do occasional annotations or document signing, it might be cheaper to simply use a phone stylus or even your finger.The ideal pen: Surface Pen ($100 at Microsoft)Basic option: Amazon Basics Stylus ($8 at Amazon)

Great for heavy duty inking

Ultimately, whether you should grab a Surface Pen or not depends on whether or not you think you'll be using it. As a product, the Surface Pen is a great companion designed to perfectly complement the Pro 6.

The Surface Pro 6 has a co-processor built to reduce latency between the pen and the screen, producing a nearly-imperceptible amount of lag. The Surface Pen supports tilt shading and 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity, which is great for digital art and heavy-duty note-taking alike.

Surface Book 2

Inking in Sketchable. (Image credit: Windows Central)

The Surface Pen supports leading art programs like Clip Studio, Photoshop, Sketchable, and dozens more, with a reverse digital "rubber" for erasing, and additional configurable buttons for added functionality. If you're planning to use your Surface Pro 6 as a travel buddy for note-taking at university, a simple click of the eraser button can launch OneNote for fast-access to your digital notepad. It even has a magnetic strip down the side for storing against the edge of your Pro 6 (also compatible with the Surface Go, Surface Book 2, and Surface Studio 2).

If you're not a heavy note taker or a digital artist, the Surface Pen is a little harder to justify. At $100, if you're only planning to use the Surface Pro 6 screen for annotating documents occasionally, highlighting, or signing documents, you can probably just purchase a simple non-digital rubber-tip cell phone stylus (like the Amazon Basics model), or just use your finger to achieve the same results. If you can spare the cash though, adding a Surface Pen to your tool kit can add a personal touch to signatures and other quick notes.

Jez Corden
Co-Managing Editor

Jez Corden is a Managing Editor at Windows Central, focusing primarily on all things Xbox and gaming. Jez is known for breaking exclusive news and analysis as relates to the Microsoft ecosystem while being powered by tea. Follow on Twitter @JezCorden and listen to his XB2 Podcast, all about, you guessed it, Xbox!