Has anyone tried other synaptics pens (Dell AAGN, HP Active Pen, etc.) with the Switch Alpha 12?

There have been several posts (including mine) on this subject in  the English and German sections of the Acer Community.

All agree that the handwriting on this device is bad. Until now, no one has come up with another pen that works on the Swithch Alpha 12. It is a second generation Synaptics digitizer and the only company that apparently uses the same digititizer is Fujitsu with similar poor results.

I am disappointed too and may return or sell the device. I don't think that Acer can or will improve this deficiency. Unfortunately none of the rreviews I read before I bought the device mentioned this fault - often they tested devices without the pen (which is optional on some models).

Anyway this experience will make me think twice before buying an Acer device again.

I used to have a Sony Multiflip 13 along with a HTC N-trig pen (I thought it would work well with the Switch Alpha 12, which was wrong), and was fully satisfied with pen writing. It's been a week since I bought this Switch Alpha 12, and pen writing function is really disappointing. To make matters worse, someone in charge of ACER repair center said that the company also acknowledges the problem but there hasn't been any significant improvement on it. 

So far I haven't found any evidence that non-Acer pens work well with Switch Alpha 12, but it seems quite possible that Dell 750-AAGN pens work since it is known as a "Synaptics Active Plus pen" like the one that came with my Switch Alpla 12. Plus, the 750-AAGN seems to be the best so far among the same technology-based(Synaptics) pens. I am seriously thinking about buying it for that reason, but still hesitant waiting for some reliable proof. Or hopefully there would be some kind of enhancement (such as firmware update). Hope to get some useful comments from those who are concerned (including ACER tech specialists).

Alex from Korea

I was about to order a 750-AAGN, and I happened to find a thread on the pen issue. According to the comment, a 750-AAGN does not function properly on the Switch Alpha 12.

"Another thing is that i tried the dell active stylus 750-AAGN, the alpha 12 can sense the pen and detect the pointer but it cannot write on the unit. That really sad as that pen was really good when i used it on my dell venue 11 pro 7130(although its spotty some time after long uses, I think that mostly the problem of the 7130 overheating and creating problem with the screen)."

Here are the links:

http://community.acer.com/t5/Windows-Tablets-and-Convertibles/Acer-Alpha-Switch-12-Active-Pen/m-p/440306/highlight/true#M19134

http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/threads/acer-aspire-switch-alpha-12-s.69500/page-13

By the way, PatientGuy, have you tried Lazy Nezumi Pro on Onenote 2016? I've tried it and couldn't see any difference. 

Hi Alexkim,

Have you try to hook the plugin to the Onenote window?  By default, it's active only for Photoshop amd you have to hook any other application at startup.

https://www.reddit.com/r/stylus/wiki/index

The link above is about recent pressure-sensitive pen devices. I would never had bought the Switch Alpha 12 if I had known this link before. The digitizer for the Switch Alpha 12 is categorized as "ELAN," which doesn't appear as a category among digitizers but is grouped as "other." What is more, it is described as below:

"Synaptics, Atmel, other - any other pressure-sensitive digital pen technology. Usually nearly-unusable."

Acer definitely seems to have made a wrong choice of applying non-WACOM/non-Ntrig digitizers for the Switch Alpha 12 that could otherwise have made it the best 2-in-1 device with a reasonable price. I hope Acer will do something, I mean anything, to fix this problem.

Hi PatientGuy,

I couldn't see the border though I followed the steps as described on the "Nezumi" popup. Have you succeeded in seeing the border in OneNote window? Please let me know if there is something missing. Or it seems possible that Nemuzi functions are not effective on OneNote.

It's a pity that so far no user-based efforts work on enhancing handwriting function for the Switch Alpha 12, including RedStone, Calibration of pen touch, installing Wintab drivers, and so on.  

I cannot discern any difference  between my handwriting on Bamboo  Paper and on the other Apps like OneNote, Squid, Write or Plumbago.

Maybe part of the bad handwriting experienced by some posters here is due to Windows. I think very few have access to S-Pen or other stylus enabled tablets to see the difference between Windows tabets and tablets with other OS.

There are some reports about bad handwriting recognition on Windows 10 on the Internet (http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/windows-10-ink-is-a-toy)

I gave up on taking notes on the Acer Switch Alpha 12. For note-taking I now use a Huawei Mediapad 10.0, which  I find vastly superior for this purpose. Even the Google handwriting recognition is much better and doesn't need any training.

Whatever they say here: The Acer Switch Alpha 12 uses an ELAN and not a Synaptics digitizer. You have to use an ELAN compatible pen. I don't know an alternative to the Acer pen. Maybe you can find some other notebook/tablet company that uses ELAN digitizers and try their pen.