At the U.K. Gadget Show last week, Wacom publicly demonstrated a product heretofore under wraps: the Bamboo Stylus. Designed to be an input device for the iPad and other tablet devices, the Bamboo Stylus has a conductive barrel that communicates with capacitive touchscreens. Translated from geek speak, that means you can hold the Bamboo Stylus like a traditional pen to write and draw on a display.
Although I haven’t yet tested the stylus, I don’t believe that it’s a replacement for Wacom tablets and their specialized pens; for example, the Bamboo Stylus isn’t pressure-sensitive and doesn’t have interchangeable nibs. (And of course, even the coolest iPad app doesn’t replace the workhorse programs designers and photographers run on laptop and desktop computers.)
The Bamboo Stylus will be available in May 2011 for $29.99. Wacom has also developed Bamboo Paper, a note-taking app that the company will introduce when the Bamboo Stylus is released.
[Edited April 20, 2011, to note that Wacom has now published information about the Stylus on its official website: https://www.wacom.com/en/Products/BambooStylus.aspx]
Click the screenshot below to watch a demo of the Bamboo Stylus at the U.K. Gadget Show:
This article was last modified on January 18, 2023
This article was first published on April 19, 2011
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