His anyone noticed any appreciable differences in performance between the two? Especially in handwriting recognition? Thanks!
1 Like
I see no difference in handwriting. The tap to change tool and inductive charging / attached to iPad are awesome.
1 Like
I have not noticed any difference in writing performance. The ability to tap to switch tools is nice, but for me the real benefit is having the pencil always charged and available. That’s turned it from something I use every few weeks to something I use every day.
2 Likes
My experience is the same as the others - no noticeable differences in performance or precision. I do like the reduced length and matte finish of the new one better though. The flat edge is also nice for the finger to rest on, so it is better to handle IMO.
I had to disable the double tap thing. Turns out, I constantly tap the beat of any music in my headphones, so I constantly got switched out of the tool I had selected 
2 Likes
I have a 6th gen iPad 2018 — not the Pro model. As I understand it, it’s compatible with the 1st generation Pencil, but not the newer model.
Is it even worth it for me to get the first-generation Pencil? All the comments about the 2d generation talk about how much better it is than the first-generation, making me unenthusiastic about buying the first generation Pencil.
It probably depends on your use case. I have a 10.5” iPad Pro, so I have the first-generation pencil. I use the pencil every single day (I do a lot of handwritten note-taking and PDF markup).
It’s great! And worth the charging/storage inconveniences relative to the second-gen pencil.
Would I get the second-gen for the added convenience if it were compatible with my iPad? Absolutely. But there’s no way I’d forego the benefits of the pencil in general (for my use cases), so I’m happy to have the first-gen.
1 Like
Yes, I agree. I love my 1g pencil for marking up PDFs and manuscripts. I’m coming to realize though that that trying to get my handwriting to a state where it can be recognised by current software probably isn’t going to be worth the effort. And it sounds like newer hardware won’t help that.
1 Like
One of the reasons why I upgraded to the new iPad Pro was because of the new Pencil even though my old iPad Pro is just one year old. I haven’t noticed any difference in performance, but I love the fact that I wouldn’t have to worry about my Pencil running out of battery since I use it all the time.
2 Likes
Since your iPad will only work with the 1st Get Pencil… May I suggest you visit the Apple Refurb section when you are ready? They had that model available for as low as $79US at one point.
1 Like
I also like the new finish – it feels good in the hand. The double-tap thing seems like more of “because we can” feature than essential – not every app supports it yet and it is easy to trigger it unintentionally. I set the default double-tap to “show palette”. I like the little indicator showing battery charge when the pencil is docked.
1 Like