As USI becomes the standard, the USI pen evolution continues to move forward [VIDEO]

USI is no longer the new kid on the block. In fact – and I had to look this up – we’ve been talking about USI since mid-2019. For over two years, we’ve watched as USI went from a thing that we were waiting impatiently to arrive to a pretty standard inclusion in the modern Chromebook. As a matter of fact, at this point you can’t have stylus support on a new Chromebook without at least including USI.

That sort of standardization is exactly what we were hoping for with USI: a clear set of rules to govern how a simple input device should work with a laptop on a consistent basis. I’ve said it before but the metaphor works: you don’t buy a mouse that works only on one, specific laptop. Why would you feel the need to buy a stylus that only works with one device? We needed a standard and we got one in USI. And now that it’s been here for a bit, we’re starting to see some nice maturation in not only the selection of pens available, but their unique abilities as well.

The last time we took a look at the “state of USI”, things were really just getting started. Sure, it was just 6 months ago, but for emerging tech, that’s a decent amount of time. Back then, the pens we had on us were all basically the same. They are all fine and worth buying, but there was little to set one apart from the other. We had one pen with some side buttons, one with no buttons, and we can’t forget that wild Ufro pen that is still in development that picks colors from real-world objects and lets you use them digitally. But without any real functionality on the custom buttons or a retail model of Ufro’s pen on the market yet, things have basically stayed the same for a while in the USI world.

Dont’ get me wrong: that’s not really a bad thing. As more pens began showing up, more Chromebook makers started shipping their own take on a USI pen, and there are now enough available that prices have remained competitive. That part is great, but for the better part of 2021, there simply wasn’t much changing in the USI space. At the end of the day, we needed more people using more USI pens so more apps would be made to fully leverage them. We got that, and that’s awesome. But there’s more to USI than just “good pens.”

The USI pen standard has much more to offer

There have been a few developments in the past couple months that have me feeling like there’s fresh life in the USI competition again. Take HP’s cool, wirelessly-charging, included-in-the-box USI pen that clicks onto the side of the HP Chromebook x2 11 with ease, stays put, and tops up while there. That’s not a boring, round USI pen. It’s some pretty sweet tech.

Then there’s the newest USI pen from Penoval that really stands out as a 3rd-party pen in some very cool ways. We need to mention that Penoval is sponsoring this post/video, by the way, and sent over their sweet new pen for us to check out. Though there aren’t many out there like it yet, it feels like a peek at things that are coming in the 3rd-party USI pen accessory space.

What do I mean by that? Well, from the get-go, this new Penoval USI pen just feels different than other USI pens that have come before. To be honest, we’ve had our fill of round, metal pens that do the job just fine but don’t offer any new features. Again, USI is a very robust standard with lots of tech to offer – again, I’d reference the real world color-grabbing Ufro pen, here – and up to this point, it has simply felt like all that potential hasn’t been fully realized. Though this new pen from Penoval doesn’t do every single thing USI is capable of, it brings new features in that we’ve not yet seen.

First up, it seems to handle palm rejection better than most. There are tons of technical things that happen in the exchange of info between a pen and the screen, so I’m not completely sure if there are hardware tweaks that can make a single pen better or worse at palm rejection, but this one seems to be better than most.

Then we have to talk about the packaging, look and feel of this device. The box is slick, the presentation out of the package is refined and clean, and the pen itself is light, comfy, and flat on two sides. This makes it nice to hold, but also keeps it from rolling away on a desk. There’s USB Type C charging – no AAAA batteries, here – and a pen tip that feels far more Apple Pencil-like without much of the give you get in other USI pens. It feels great to write with on the screen.

But the best feature this pen offers is the eraser tip on the top that behaves just like you’d expect. I tested in Google Keep, Squid, Cursive and Canvas and the eraser picked up on the first try – no settings, no tweaks, no extra effort necessary. And this is the clear and amazing promise of USI: a standard that works the way you expect it to work every single time, regardless of the device you use it on. To repeat the metaphor: you don’t plug in a mouse and cross your fingers that a left-click will select items on the screen. It’s a foregone conclusion, and this is where we’re getting to with USI on Chromebooks. Open the Chromebook, pick up the pen, and get to drawing.

With more pens, more supported apps, and more devices that use this new standard, things will only continue getting better. More pens like this new one from Penoval will emerge with even more new feautres and these pens will be able to be made by 3rd parties, bought on multiple marketplaces, and be expected to simply work right out of the box on all USI supported Chromebooks. It feels like another big step forward for USI, and if this new Penoval pen is anything to go by, the future of this tech looks really promising.