Review: Adonit Dash 4 touchscreen stylus

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Review unit provided by Adonit

The Adonit Dash 4 is a digital stylus made for Apple and Android devices. It features 15 hour battery life, a 2mm fine point tip and depending on the device you use, there may be palm rejection.

This stylus does not have tilt and pressure sensitivity so it’s a stylus more suited for writing than drawing.

The packaging box actually mentions all touchscreen devices but I wasn’t able to get it to work on my Microsoft Surface Pro 8.

And just to give you the bottom line up front, this stylus has better pen performance on Apple than with Android devices.

Price of the stylus is US $59.99. In the box there’s the pen, USB-C charging adapter and two replacement pen tips.

The pen is available in either graphite gray or matte silver colour. Build quality is solid thanks to the metal body. The matte textured surface makes the pen comfortable to hold.

Pen tip can be replaced easily. I don’t remember replacement pen tips being included with Adonit Dash 3.

Charging with with the USB-C adapter. The pen would snap on magnetically. The magnet is extremely strong that the pen won’t detach even if it’s horizontal.

The pen comes with two modes that can be identified by the green or blue light indicator at the back of the pen.

Green mode is meant for all Apple and Android devices. In green mode, the pen works no different from your finger so there’s no palm rejection.

Blue mode is meant for Apple devices released from 2018 onwards, and there’s palm rejection with compatible devices and apps. I tested the pen (blue mode) with my iPad Pro 2018 but could not get palm rejection to work even though in theory it should work.

Unfortunately for Android devices, there may be line offset depending on how you hold the pen. When the pen was held pointing sideways, there’s noticeable line offset.

When the pen is held with pen tip pointing upwards, there’s no line offset.

With Android devices, there’s also noticeable jitter and wobble with diagonal lines.

In green mode, which works just like a finger, you can’t rest your palm on the display while writing. If your palm is on the display, the pen won’t work properly because it’s like having two fingers on the display.

Pen performance on the iPad is much better. There’s no line offset and diagonal line wobble/jitter is less noticeable.

When the pen works well, handwriting can be captured quite accurately. Writing is also responsive enough with the typical stylus latency.

If you are using an iPad from 2018 onwards and the note taking app supports palm rejection, you can get perfect palm rejection as the iPad is able to differentiate the pen from your palm and finger.