Best tablets with a stylus
A tablet’s stylus is an essential part of the device. Whether you need it to create illustrations, draw, edit photographs or videos, or create better presentations, the perfect pen will make those workloads much easier. Styluses have come a long way, first starting out as a somewhat luxury add-on that only a few could have, to now becoming an absolute necessity that must be included, especially with big screen tablets. Likewise, companies like Apple and Samsung have managed to create some of the best stylus pens for their tablets. Here you’ll see our curation of the current best tablets with a stylus.
Products at a Glance
How we picked the best tablet with a stylus
Choosing a good tablet with a stylus is a hard job. If you want a good and responsive pen, you’ll have to spend for it. However, we want to ensure that job is all the easier, so we’ve tested and judged a list of styluses to come with a curation of the best tablets with a stylus for you. We picked the pens that offer the best sensitivity, price, and overall feeling while in use.
Features and considerations
To choose the best tablets with a stylus, we considered important parts of the device, like the tablet’s display, the drawing experience, build quality, and the functionality of the pen itself. For this category, it’s important to have a pen that does not require a lot of charging, or none at all, one that’s equally as easy to grab as it does offer the most precise sensitivity.
Best tablets with a stylus
- Quality design
- Great magnetic charging
- Amazing drawing experience
- Compatibility
Apple is the single-best winner in the stylus category. The iPad Pro with a 12.9-inch screen, ProMotion, and a mini-LED display is almost the perfect complement for the M1 processor that Apple builds into its device. It not only utilizes one of the best styluses but is also among the best tablets for college in 2022.
A good screen and great power capacity work perfectly as a canvas for the Apple Pencil 2, a top-notch stylus widely used as a professional tool for illustrators, animators, photographers, and video editors alike. For any task users may want to throw at it, this pen and tablet combo will handle them perfectly. This partnership can make a simple task like note-taking the best experience of them all. The handwriting recognition of the iPadOS can turn pretty much any hieroglyph into the exact word you were aiming to pen.
- Great grab feeling
- Efficient battery charging
- Great levels of pressure
- Works better on a 120Hz screen
All that matters on this list is the pen-tablet compatibility. We already determined the Apple Pencil 2 is the best stylus around, so it would be unfair not to add another great Apple device that also supports this pen. The iPad Air 5th Gen is a top-notch tablet. It’s powered by the M1 processor, with 8GB of RAM and an amazing screen that, despite not offering the 120Hz refresh rate, still produces accurate and incredible images. Like the iPad Pro, drawing with this stylus is one of the greatest experiences you’ll ever have on a slate.
If you’re looking for an Apple device, but don’t want to spend too much, or just require a smaller screen, this should be the best one to go with.
- Windows 11
- Great for light work
- Amazing for note-taking
- Has to be bought separately
Microsoft has built the Surface Pro 8 with a stylus as good as the S Pen, but much less expensive and with some additional perks.
Microsoft makes the Surface family focus specifically on productivity and work efficiency. With both in mind, the stylus is a perfect addition for those who really want to focus on work while utilizing their tablets. A stylus with 4,096 levels of pressure paired with a tablet that leverages a 2880×1920 pixel 2K display built on a 13-inch screen secures the greatest forum for completing those tasks you’ve been procrastinating.
The downside behind this tablet is that the Surface Slim Pen 2 does not come included with the Surface Pro, but it shouldn’t be too much of a big deal thanks to the relatively affordable price they offer the stylus. After all, having a Windows 11 OS to work or study with is an advantage you can’t let pass up.
And that’s all for the best tablets with a stylus. These devices offer incredible workflow utilization with their ingenious styluses made to free the shackles of using one’s finger. While Apple, as always, steals the top spot yet again, rivals in the space, including Samsung and Microsoft, still show some promise in the face of Apple’s continued dominance. At least the Galaxy Tab S8 sports an OLED screen and the Surface Pro 8’s Windows 11 OS is hard to pass up.
Our Verdict
The definitive answer is simple: Apple has one of the best styluses on the market. The iPad Pro 12.9 is the perfect fit to complete a relationship so balanced that not only lets you do the most demanding illustrations and photo editing, but also makes your life that much easier via simple tasks, like note-taking or just making quick annotations in presentation mode. Apple’s stylus and tablet combo prove time again to be among the most top-tier, despite their exorbitant price points.