Incipio Inscribe Executive Stylus & Pen review

The stylus is far from dead. For many of us, nothing beats the pinpoint accuracy you can get from using a good capacitive stylus, whether you're just cruising through the home screens on your Android device, drawing, or even typing on an on-screen keyboard. When Draw Something came out, I looked at my poor chewed up stylus and decided I had to get another one. After snooping around ShopAndroid.com I came across the Incipio Executive Stylus & Pen, and figured I'd give it a try. As someone who always carries a pen, I wanted to try and kill two birds with one stone, and this one does it.

If you're looking to pick up a stylus for general purpose use with an Android phone or tablet, I'd recommend the Incipio Executive to anyone. It's thick, making it easy to hold an use, has a nice high ball that works at just about any angle, and quality construction means it's not going to leak ink all over your shirt pocket or briefcase. Hit the break to read more.

The pen side is a nice, refillable ball point that uses the same cartridges as my standard Parker pen. Maybe I'm some sort of "pen snob," but the way a pen rolls and the ink flows is important to me. Even in today's modern age I still do a lot of writing by hand, so I'm picky. Yes, I have better pens, but this one is just fine. If you still need to sign things like checks or invoices all day, you'll appreciate where I'm coming from when I say it flows smooth enough to feel right. 

Enough about the pen. Let's get to the meat and talk about the stylus end. It's made of standard capacitive soft rubber that's used for most styli, is hollow for easy maneuvering, and sits high off the body so you can use it at a pretty harsh angle. You might think that this sort of thing doesn't matter, and for tap typing or swooshing through home screens, you're mostly right. But when you try to use a capacitive stylus for any sort of drawing, you'll appreciate the soft hollow rubber and multi-directional angles you can get with the Incipio Executive. Digital artwork with a standard stylus (we're not talking Wacom digitizers or anything of that sort) takes a bit of practice. It's more like scratching or etching than it is drawing with pen and ink or pencils, and being able to hold the stylus at an angle that feels natural is important, at least for me. I'm no Picasso, but I enjoy scratching out a drawing or two on occasion, and the thick body combined with the full, round tip just works really well for me. 

Whatever your needs for a stylus are, this one is certainly worth taking a look at. It works well with popular sketching apps like Sketchbook Mobile, more advanced editors like Photoshop Touch, and it makes a world of difference basting through the words in Draw Something.

Jerry Hildenbrand
Senior Editor — Google Ecosystem

Jerry is an amateur woodworker and struggling shade tree mechanic. There's nothing he can't take apart, but many things he can't reassemble. You'll find him writing and speaking his loud opinion on Android Central and occasionally on Twitter.