17 inch convertible, would I miss a digitizer / pen support?

[ochhanz]

Hi everyone,

I saw a decent deal for a Dell Inspiron 17 inch 2-1 laptop with touchscreen that piqued my interest. One thing I noticed is that it seems to lack a digitizer, so there is no pen support.

I never had a laptop with proper pen support, now I use an active capacitive stylus (just a stylus with a battery in it so the tip can be smaller) with my touchscreen laptop for regularly writing some short notes in documents or using it in a drawing/sketch program (the stylus is ok, not good and not bad).

So am I guessing I will benefit from a digitizer / pen (especially since a 17 inch screen sounds like fun to sketch on) and that is why I am hesitating buying this laptop, do you think a digitizer / pen would a gimmick for me or would it be an important factor to consider?

Thanks :smile:

 

[ochhanz]

[SUB]Small thread necro:[/SUB]
For anyone else that was wondering if a pen would be a factor to consider for document & drawing work on 15/17 laptops: definitely yes. I am very happy I went with a laptop that has pen support (hp envy 15 2-1). I don't use a pen all the time but at some moments it is not only helpful for e.g. writing formula's or figures but also because drawn text catches the attention of readers differently than typed text.
The more I am using an (active) pen the more I realize a stylus is just a dumb tool. With a pen you can easily pan/scroll/zoom around your documents with your fingers while drawing with your pen. The buttons on a pen (for erasing and selection of ink) make the drawing process more fluent. Also when you select ink you can convert it to shapes in certain apps (powerpoint, some uwp apps etc, word still lacks this iirc) but this is of course only be useful if you can quickly select ink with the pen button (which a stylus lacks).
I would recommend to get a pen with pressure sensitivity support, my current pen was cheap so it lacks that. It also lacks tilt support but I don't feel I am missing that.