I was messing around with this 720 (Best Buy model with dGPU) on Saturday at a local display and my initial impressions were pretty good -- however, I don't have a pen to test on it and best buy didn't have anything I could use either. Was kinda bummed about that.
Anyway my concern is the new Wacom pen might not be until September (!!!) according to that
Surface Pro Artist site, I don't know what to believe anymore. I really don't want to have to buy a temporary pen while we wait for this new one if it includes tilt... and even if it doesn't add tilt for existing devices, it's still the pen I'm considering the most right now because of its dual protocol nature, so I can potentially use it on more devices.
And if I picked up the 720 during this sale (which is really tempting) I'm currently without a pen to use with it, I can't decide what my best course of action is. Maybe if I waited for the Wacom pen to come out, the price will drop more -- or the 4GB dGPU model could come out stateside and I'll be drawn to that instead. Because this puppy will be putting in some light to moderate gaming for me as well (particularly FFXIV, for starters)
OK. There are lot of things to unpack here.
First, you can buy a pen right now for it. I also went to my local Best Buy to play around with this thing. I brought my cache of pens. Both the Lenovo Pen Pro I bought for the Miix 700 and the Wacom Bamboo Smart for Select 2 in 1 works perfectly fine on it. It was fast, smooth, no lag experience.
Second, Rick's supposition about September release for the Bamboo Ink is probably wrong, because there are people who reported on the web that apparently already bought them from Best Buy. I checked in person with my local Best Buy. They first told me that they have the SKU in the system, but it is simply listed as "sold out" for all the stores. Few days later they told me that these pens just got to their local distribution centers and should be delivered to LA area stores sometime this coming week.
In either case, you can get a pen now, or get it later in the week:
Ones you can get now (but have to be ordered on line since most store don't carry AES pens) are gen 11 and 12 AES pens that have 2048 levels of pressure, 1 gram Initial Activation Force, and no tilt. They go for around $40.
The new pen you should be able to buy from Best Buy later this week (Wacom Bamboo Ink Smart) is gen 13 AES pen that has 4096 levels of pressure, 1 gram of IAF, and hopefully tilt. This goes for $70.
Either way, the Yoga 720 can be used now with pen action. If I had $1500 to spare, I can buy one tomorrow, and use it perfectly fine with my existing collection of Wacom AES pens.
Now as for September timing that Rick is talking about, there is fire there, but for something else important potentially for the dual protocol pen. September is when a second Windows Creator's update is slated for IIRC. There is a chance that these Bamboo Ink pens has necessary hardware to do pen tilt (second coil), but it might not work in Windows until that second Creator's update for those apps that use Windows INK API (Sketchables, Adobe CC, Clip Studio Paint etc.) and uses N-Trig digitizer boards or None Wacom but still AES compatible digitizer board (namely Elan boards used in Miix 700 and HP X2 line).
For official Wacom AES board devices like Yoga 720, Miix 510, Dell Inspiron 15 7568 and others, a Wacom Wintab driver update and/or Wacom digitizer firmware update should add the tilt capability if the new pen has necessary tilt hardware. Problem is, Wacom tends to be really late with software updates for new hardware. Also, this first version of dual protocol pen might not have the second coil necessary for tilt. Lots of variables here.
Who knows, Maybe the current Creator's update recognizes pen tilt already. I need that Bamboo Ink Smart pen in my hand to test these things personally. I don't trust others to do it properly. Sometime Rick also makes some simple mistakes when testing out these things. He has way more AES and N-Trg devices than I do but I have more experience with these things and knowledge of how these things actually work frankly.
