When it comes to using a stylus with an iPad, the Holy Grail is a stylus that gives you the precision and feel of a nice pen. Unfortunately, the iPad is not designed to recognize something as small as a pen tip. It is designed to recognize input from a finger — something the size of a thick crayon. Thus, for a long time, all iPad styluses had larger rubbery tips to simulate the touch of a finger.
Adonit changed all of that in late 2013 when it introduced the original Adonit Jot Script, a stylus with a tiny, hard tip just like a pen. Adonit figured out a way to have the iPad recognize a tip that is far, far smaller than a finger by emitting an electrical pulse that the iPad is tricked into thinking is input from a fingertip. This meant that the stylus needed a power source, and the original Script used a AAA battery. Other stylus makers followed suit with similar models, and this type of stylus is often called an active stylus.
When I reviewed the that original Adonit Jot Script, I was amazed at the engineering, but I was frustrated by some disadvantages. One thing that I didn't like was that when you tried to make a diagonal line, the line would appear somewhat wavy on the iPad. This improved in 2014 when Adonit gave updated software to app developers, which made apps like GoodNotes work even better with the Jot Script. But then it got worse in late 2014 when Apple introduced the iPad Air. Something about the iPad Air screen made it less compatible with the original Jot Script, and this continued to be a problem with the iPad Air 2 introduced in late 2015. You could use an active stylus like the original Jot Script with the iPad Air and iPad Air 2, but it was not as precise as when you used an active stylus on older iPads.
Fortunately, the Adonit engineers recently figured out how to solve this problem, and the result is the new Adonit Jot Script 2. Adonit sent me a free sample to review, and I've been using it for the past few weeks to take notes in my office. My conclusion is that is a huge improvement over the original Jot Script, but it still has some drawbacks.
Diagonal lines
The biggest improvement in the Jot Script 2 is that it has no problem at all with diagonal lines. What you draw is what you get on the screen. If your line isn't straight, the fault lies with your penmanship, not the stylus. Here is an example of using the original Jot Script and the new Jot Script 2 on an iPad Air 2 using GoodNotes:
As you can see, the difference when you making a diagonal line is substantial. But even when just writing words, I find that the Jot Script 2 does a much better job. Whatever Adonit did to make the iPad work when making a diagonal line also makes the stylus more precise for any writing that you are doing. You can see this in the above picture, especially in the T, o and w where I wrote "The quick brown fox..." The stylus may not improve your penmanship, but unlike other active styluses, the Jot Script 2 won't make your penmanship any worse than it already is.
Rechargeable and slimmer
Another disadvantage of the original Jot Script that I noted in my review was that it needed a AAA battery to be powered. Not only did this mean that you need to go through batteries to keep it charged, but it also added to the diameter of the stylus.
The new Jot Script 2 is rechargeable. It comes with a small charger than plugs into a USB port, and the stylus fits into the circle on the charger. A magnet keeps the stylus connected to the charger. The charger works very well. Adonit says that the Jot Script 2 "will function for over 20 hours of pen down writing time before a charge is needed. A full charge only takes 45 to 50 minutes." Those claims seem about right to me.
The new version of the Jot Script is also skinnier than the original version. It is still not nearly as thin as a traditional pen, or as thin as most non-active styluses, but it is a noticeable improvement. In the following picture, the original Jot Script is on the left, and the Script 2 is on the right.
Design
The design of the Adonit Jot Script 2 is very similar to the original Jot Script, but there are a few subtle changes, one of which I really appreciate. One of my complaints in my review of the original stylus was that the button that you press to turn on the stylus was very hard to distinguish from the rest of the stylus, forcing me to waste time hunting for a button when I wanted to turn on the stylus. I included this photo in my review of the original Jot Script to show the problem:
In the Jot Script 2, the button is still flush with the rest of the stylus and thus somewhat hard to find just by touch, but now it is a shiny silver that is much easier to see.
Here is a picture from the Adonit website that does a good job of showing you the difference in the buttons:
Note that the button is only used to turn the stylus on. Some active styluses also have a button that can perform functions when used with a compatible app. When I use those styluses, I really enjoy being able to press a button to undo whatever I wrote last. Adonit sells another active stylus, the Jot Touch, which has both buttons that can perform functions and pressure sensitivity, but I don't know if it has yet been updated to work well with an iPad Air and iPad Air 2 like the Jot Script 2 has.
The Jot Script 2 is also a tiny bit shorter than the original Jot Script, but the difference is not enough to make any real difference.
The one design feature that Adonit did not change, even though I really had hoped that they would do so, is that the Jot Script 2 still lacks a clip on the side. This means that you cannot easily clip it to a pocket, and thus the stylus rolls around in your shirt pocket. It also means that if you put down the stylus on a table, it can roll around on the table and sometimes for me would roll off the table completely.
Noise
One of my biggest complaints about the original Jot Script was that the hard tip is noisy when you tap against the screen. I even posted a video so that you could hear the sound. The sound in the Jot Script 2 is similar; it is perhaps the slightest bit less noisy, but when I tried to record the difference, the difference was too slight to hear. Thus, that original video still gives you a sense of what kind of noise you will make with the Jot Script 2.
I realize that we are not talking about a lot of noise, and some folks won't mind it at all, especially if you are in an environment with background noise. But I tend to take notes in rooms that are very quiet except for whoever is speaking, and the noise bothers me. It also makes me want to tap more slowly on my screen and with less pressure to reduce the noise, but that often results in the stylus not working as well, so then I need to erase what I just wrote and write it again — an annoying process.
If you are taking notes in a noisy environment, or if you are drawing in a room by yourself, and thus the slight noise doesn't matter, I very much like the feel of the hard tip against the iPad screen. I'm sure that this is why the original Jot Script was so popular. It's a very nice stylus. But if I am in a quiet room with others around me — which is a very typical environment for meetings and team conference calls that I attend — the noise produced by the hard tip of the Jot Script 2, like the lack of a clip, annoys me.
Conclusion
The Adonit Jot Script 2 works well, and I do like this stylus. When you use a fine point tip on the iPad, you can be incredibly precise on where you want the digital ink to be drawn. It feels much more like writing with a pen, whereas many non-active styluses feel more like you are writing with a crayon.
When you use an active stylus like the Jot Script 2 with a compatible app, such as Evernote or GoodNotes, the app knows to ignore input from anything except for the stylus. If you rest your palm on your iPad screen while you write and you find that this often results in the iPad thinking that you intended to write on the screen when you just rested your palm, then an active stylus like the Jot Script 2 will solve that problem.
But having said that, I feel that I can be just as precise when I use another stylus which also happens to be made by Adonit, the 2015 version of the Adonit Jot Pro, which I reviewed two months ago. That non-active stylus creates the illusion of a fine tip by using a clear disc at the end of the stylus. The Jot Pro is only $30, whereas the Jot Script 2 costs $75. Also, with the Jot Pro, I don't need to worry about charging or replacing batteries; no power is needed at all. And finally, while the Jot Pro does make a little bit of noise when you use it, it makes far less noise than the Jot Script 2. There are also some newer non-active styluses with rubber tips, like the third generation Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo, that do an excellent job of writing on the iPad Air or Air 2. The Stylus duo tip is not as small as the Jot Script 2 or the Jot Pro, but it gets the job done, and it is silent to use (and has a clip on the side).
If you want to use an active stylus so that you can use a fine tip and take advantage of compatible apps, this is a really good stylus — and likely the best active stylus for the iPad Air and iPad Air 2. If only it were silent and had a clip, then I would use it all of the time. Instead, I can only give it a qualified recommendation.
Click here to get the Adonit Jot Script 2 from Adonit ($74.99)
