This stylus set includes two for your fingers and two for your pens. Nifty designs…but are they useful?The
TrueTip Starter Pack actually includes two units each of two different products. First, there's the TrueTip Finger Stylus. This thing is a wide plastic ring attached to a "spine" and a stylus point that rests against your finger tip. The ring part is not a complete circle, and the plastic is tough but malleable, so it can be squeezed or stretched out to better fit your individual finger size. It is meant to be worn with the spine against your fingernail, but you can also rotate it the opposite way, which I found to be more comfortable.
The nice thing about the Finger Stylus is that, like the Comfort Stylus, it basically turns your finger into the implement, which puts your finger muscles closer to the Nintendo DS touch screen and can translate into faster response times when playing games. However, this turns out to be negated in most games by the fact that your finger is covering up most of the touch screen, so you can't really see what's happening in the game. The other problem with the Finger Stylus is that it just isn't comfortable or secure. No matter how tightly I fit the ring section onto my index finger, it would still wiggle and rotate during gameplay, and the spine piece does not offer much support for when you press down on the stylus tip. In other words, the Finger Stylus doesn't feel tightly connected to your finger, which is absolutely necessary when playing a fast-paced game.
The Pen Cap Stylus is a much tighter and more useful design. It's literally just a stylus tip mounted on the end of an otherwise normal pen cap. The starter pack doesn't include any pens, but the Pen Cap Stylus will fit the typical Bic disposable ballpoint pen. I did try it on many other pens and none of them would fit, so that's a consideration. Still, Bic is the most common brand, and there's something undeniably useful about having a pen in your shirt pocket that also works as a stylus. Using a full-size ink pen as your gaming stylus works well if you desire something much longer and thicker than the original Nintendo DS stylus. I tend to grip pens close to the tip, where the clip on the pen cap can get in the way, so I ended up holding the pen farther up, like a paintbrush. This style gives a removed feeling to touch screen control, but it is very stable and comfortable, unlike the Finger Stylus.
So, I can't recommend the awkward Finger Stylus when there is a similar but far superior alternative in the Comfort Stylus, but the Pen Cap Stylus is a great option to have. If you just can't stand the original DS stylus and want something closer to the size of an ink pen, you can't do better than using an actual ink pen, and the Pen Cap Stylus lets you do that. This product is also sold separately from the Finger Stylus, so that's the way to go if you are interested. Just make sure you have some Bic pens lying around. If you are planning to upgrade to the DS Lite soon, be sure to try the improved stylus included with that system before shelling out for any third-party solution.
Pros:
Pen Cap Stylus
Cons:
Finger Stylus
Appearance: 8.0
Both items are available in multiple colors. The Finger Stylus looks a bit goofy, but it's small anyway. The Pen Cap Stylus looks like a normal pen cap with a little point at the end, which isn't a detriment at all.
Comfort: 5.0
The Finger Stylus is not comfortable at all – the tip part is too loose even if you squeeze the ring so tight that it cuts off circulation in your finger. It's probably tight enough for most PDA applications, but not a fast-paced video game in which you need pixel-perfect accuracy. The asymmetric spine is just weird; a full thimble design would feel more balanced. The Pen Cap Stylus can be perfectly comfortable depending on your personal style of holding an ink pen.
Quality: 9.0
Both pieces are made of durable, semi-rigid plastic, and the tip is sharper than the original DS stylus but not too sharp.
Value: 7.0
The Starter Pack costs about ten bucks for two units each of the Finger Stylus and Pen Cap Stylus. It's a good way to sample both, though these things aren't worth $2.50 each unless you absolutely hate the original DS stylus. The Pen Cap Stylus four-pack makes more sense because it's the superior of the two products.
Construction: 0.0
N/A
Final: 7.0
Both of these products could be useful for certain types of users, though the Pen Cap Stylus fits more solidly onto an ink pen than the Finger Stylus does onto your finger. Still, there are better stylus options out there, and if you plan to upgrade to the Nintendo DS Lite, try its improved stylus before looking at third-party options.
Topic: REVIEWS: TrueTip Starter Pack (Read 2178 times)
