A good stylus can make or break the experience of using a tablet for some, but often pens are limited to just a single type of device. That problem is what the Universal Stylus Initiative aims to solve, but with USI 2.0, things aren’t quite so “universal,” as it breaks support for older pens.
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At I/O 2022, Google previewed that it was working on a Pixel tablet for next year, and such a device has now emerged in a list of Universal Stylus Initiative (USI) products.
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Back in 2018, Google joined the Universal Stylus Initiative to boost the adoption of an active pen protocol. USI today announced version 2.0 of its standard with a handful of new features possible.
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The new “Logitech Pen” is a stylus built not for just one Chromebook, but for the masses thanks to its use of the USI standard. Unfortunately, though, this is a product meant for the education market, not for the average consumer.
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The HP Chromebook x2 11 is shaping up to be the next flagship Chrome OS device. Unveiled today alongside the HP Chromebook AiO, it’s officially a “detachable” (aka convertible) that’s in the mold of the Lenovo Duet and Asus CM3, but everything about it is significantly more premium.
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The IdeaPad Duet is one of the first Chrome OS tablets that actually matters, and one of its best features is support for the USI stylus standard. Now, Lenovo has released its own USI stylus, the simply named Lenovo USI Pen.
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Thanks to the recent Universal Stylus Initiative (USI), it’s slowly becoming possible for fine-tuned, pressure-sensitive styluses to be cross-compatible between devices. Lenovo’s upcoming “USI Pen,” built to complement their recent IdeaPad Duet tablet, has just been revealed in detail by the FCC.
If you use a touchscreen tablet or computer on a regular basis, you’ll probably know how useful a stylus can be for projects that need any sort of precision. To make things work a little better together, a new standard has arrived in the form of “USI” and Google has been pushing that stylus standard on Chrome OS devices. Thanks to some of that new hardware, I’ve had a chance to spend some time with USI — here’s what you need to know about it.
Styluses have long proliferated on Android, from early tablets to Samsung’s Note line of phablets. The pen accessory is also a growing addition on Chrome OS, with Google launching their own Pen with the Pixelbook. This trend is now continuing with Google joining the Universal Stylus Initiative (USI) for a standardized stylus specification.
