This $ 70 S pen / cover combination won’t turn your S21 Ultra into a Galaxy Note

It seems more likely than ever that the Galaxy Note line as we know it is on the brink of extinction, and that is sure to be terrible news for S Pen fans. Or go? With the launch of this year’s Galaxy S21 Ultra, Samsung is apparently trying to give its fan-favorite pen a life beyond the Note – but you’ll have to find one yourself.

If you have an old Galaxy Note out there, you’re great – just take out the S Pen and draw. Otherwise, you can buy a new one for $ 40 from Samsung or shell out an extra $ 30 for a silicone case / S Pen pack. That last option seems to be the most comprehensive option because it gives Samsung’s pen a place to live, but after living with it for a week … well, let’s say it’s been a pain.

You see, it’s not because of the S Pen itself. In fact, I really like it – it’s one of the most comfortable S Pens I’ve ever used. This comfort is all thanks to the size of the S Pen. At just over ten centimeters in length, their weight and touch have more in common with a classic ballpoint pen than the tiny pen built into Samsung’s Galaxy Note smartphones.

This $ 40 S Pen packs all the bits needed to play well with the invisible Wacom digitizer inside the massive screen of the S21 Ultra. This obviously means you can write with it, but you can also hold the S Pen above the screen and touch its button to open a palette of useful options and shortcuts. It’s a lot like the S Pen experience of the old days, which is good if you’re the type who usually writes down quick reminders and shopping lists. (For other fun features, like support for in-air gestures and camera control, you’ll have to wait for the more expensive S Pen Pro to arrive later this year.)

AS Pen is also fast, which, frankly, was a surprise. When I was working on our S21 Ultra test, I noticed that the spill latency – that is, the interval between starting a spill and seeing it on the screen – was not as low as on devices like the Note 20 Ultra. I wrote that after testing the S21 Ultra with a Lamy S pen, Samsung gave in after some launch event, but the problem seems to have disappeared with this original pen. Our review unit did not receive any software updates after publication, so I am comfortable attributing this discrepancy to the S Pen I was using.

If you just need to use the S Pen to write, you are in good shape here. That said, I’m a little hesitant to recommend it to artists. In recent years, Galaxy Notes was able to detect the angle at which the S Pen was being held to produce strokes at appropriate angles. This still happens on the S21 Ultra with this slightly less intelligent version of the S Pen, and as far as I can tell, the effect works just as well here as on the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra. There are probably some extreme cases here that I am not fully explaining, but the experience still seems very close.

So, as I said, the S Pen itself is not the problem here. It is the case that leaves me wanting. On the one hand, it suffers from all the problems that other silicone cases have – it’s quick to catch lint and dust and stick to the inside of your pocket. This seems even more inevitable here because of how big the S21 Ultra gets when it’s inside this case. It was already a little bigger and heavier than last year’s S20 Ultra, but this case makes it even heavier. I understand that this was inevitable – after all, the case needs to house a physically larger S Pen all the time. Still, people used to the Galaxy Note’s easy-to-hold structure may find this package difficult to handle.

It is also important to note that, because of all the buttons on the right side of the S21 Ultra, the S Pen slides into a slot on the left side of the case. This is great news for lefties, but not so much for everyone else; I still haven’t been able to train myself to pull the pen with my left hand, so using this pen / box combination always requires a little weird juggling. Fortunately, the S Pen is very easy to pull and reinsert when finished.

Despite the weight of the case, it looks surprisingly sloppy in some places. Most notably, the trim around the loading port cutout looks very fragile; I could definitely see it getting caught in something and breaking when pulled out of a bag. Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, there were no other S21 Ultra cases available that would also comfortably house the S Pen, so people who want to turn their new flagships into ersatz Galaxy Notes need only turn around.

To be fair, I’m not sure what Samsung could have done to make this package more enjoyable to use – in addition to choosing better materials, of course. The size of the S Pen requires an oversized case and, as I said, this is the only game in town right now for anyone who wants to use an S Pen with an S21 Ultra without losing it. But let’s be clear: as nice as the S Pen can be, this pen / case combination is nowhere near as careful or elegant as a suitable Galaxy Note, and it probably wouldn’t win over Samsung’s diehards. For that reason alone, I hope that Samsung will not completely eliminate its line of advanced user phablets – with any luck, that ship hasn’t left yet.