Doodling With The 500T's Active Digitizer And S-Pen
Beyond simple handwriting recognition, the ATIV Smart PC 500T also features a Wacom active digitizer. That's something we've seen from higher-end slates, but typically not mainstream tablets (aside from Samsung's Galaxy Note). The digitizer allows you to use a pen on the device's screen as if you were writing or drawing on paper, and it registers different levels of pressure in kind.
The 500T's digitizer pen slides into the bottom-right side of the tablet; you simply catch it with your nail and tug to pull it out. Although it's smaller than some of the other pens we've used, it's still easy enough to control. Pressing it against the screen once registers a left-click. Holding down the button on the pen and tapping the screen is a right-click. Notably missing is an eraser end, though we've heard reports that other Wacom styli are compatible.
If you're an artist, this functionality is necessary. A great number of digitizers offer 256 levels of pressure sensitivity. However, Samsung confirms for us that the 500T supports 1,024 levels. With that said, we're not creating artwork that would demonstrate a more sensitive digitizer to be an advantage, nor do we expect professional artists to lean on an Atom-based tablet for their work.
The Intuos5 pen tablet I use yields superior results to the 500T, as it should. But it's also not a very portable solution, either. For what Samsung's ATIV Smart PC 500T sets out to do, its functionality is solid. Biology diagrams in OneNote are never going to be a problem (unless you start creating very large files, in which case the Atom is going to hurt performance).
