Pogo Connect Pressure Sensitive iPad Stylus Ships In October

Ten One Design, maker of some popular iPad accessories, has been teasing its Pogo Connect pressure sensitive iPad stylus (nicknamed “Blue Tiger” since March, but today it made things official, revealing what the shipping product will look like and when it’ll be available. The Pogo Connect ships “next month,” according to info sent to users who signed up for news about the device early this month, with pre-orders beginning Oct. 1.

The Connect uses Bluetooth 4.0 to convey pressure sensitivity information to the iPad, and works with the new iPad right away. iPad 1 and 2 users aren’t left out completely, however, as folks who own an iPhone 4S (and presumably the upcoming iPhone 5, since it should include Bluetooth 4.0) will also be able to download a bridge app on those devices to get their Pogo connected to their tablets. The Pogo Connect isn’t the first Bluetooth-powered pressure sensitive stylus out there; Adonit offers the Jot Touch, which was greeted by mixed reviews, primarily owing to the hit-or-miss experience of third-party software support.

As with the Jot Touch, the Connect depends on third-party app makers to build in support for its stylus, since Apple doesn’t offer any kind of system-level protocol for dealing with pressure sensitivity over Bluetooth. But already it lists a number of strong apps in its library, including popular options Paper and Sketchbook Pro as “coming soon.” It’s just a matter of seeing whether those partners execute property on the potential of the Connect.

I’m very excited to get my hands on one of these, since it seems to offer a number of advantages over the Jot Touch, including months of battery life on a single AAA thanks to low power Bluetooth 4.0, without any need to turn it off or on. It also uses something called “solid state” pressure sensing, which offers “hundreds” of levels of sensitivity and also has no moving parts, so it’ll be interesting to see how that compares with traditional methods employed by Wacom and others. Plus, if it works well, that’s one less reason to covet the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, which right now I see as essentially a big beautiful standalone drawing tablet with some web browsing and social capabilities.

Pogo Connect is offering a super secret pre-pre-order right now, and offering a laser engraved limited variant to the first 2,000 orders that cross the wire. The pen retails for $79.95, about $20 cheaper than the Adonit Jot Touch.