Microsoft has released the $145 Slim Surface Pen, which is rechargeable.  This new pen lets you forget about finding AAAA battery for your stylus but is  quite   expensive.    BTW, you can actually buy   rechargeable AAAA batteries  to be more  environmentally-friendly and be able to just swap drained battery out    for continual pen use. 

Last year, we reviewed a few Surface Pen alternatives that are tilt-sensitive but still  use AAAA batteries. Today we review two alternatives that are rechargeable and tilt-sensitive, namely the   IQS INK Pro  (bought it at RMB171 or $24 when there's discount from Taobao) and the  Heiyo Gioia    ($46 at Amazon).  We believe the INK Pro   is the same as this   Renaisser    Raphael 520   ($36),   Ciscle  ($40-44) or   Uogic  ($40) that are available on Amazon.  This is later confirmed by    Renaisser, who contacted us soon after our first draft of this review is posted online. There's also a sibling of the Heiyo Gioia branded as LACORAMO  ($46) at Amazon. We asked Heiyo about this, and they replied they were 'involved in the design' of this LACORAMO, and agree that it is not much different as long as drawing performance goes so we would skip   this LACORAMO pen in this review.

See our unboxing video for the Raphael 520 / Ink Pro and the Heiyo Gioia:

And our main review video that shows you line and curve tests and more:

The INK Pro (Raphael 520) is really light at only 14g.  Manual says "charge for 40 minutes and use for about 12 hours".  In practice, we found the battery lasts long enough that we don't really need to charge it often.

We are really happy that this pen can attach  to Surface devices   magnetic ally just like the original Surface pen. In general, this pen senses pressure and tilt very well, although in our experiment, the previous IQS pen we reviewed is still the best in light pressure sensing being able to give tapered stroke endings. Another small thing  that keeps the Raphael being perfect is that tilt is not sensed when the eraser button is pressed.   We've informed the maker and hopefully they can fix this in their next model. But anyway, this is not a big deal since we can always use keyboard shortcut 'E' to toggle eraser mode, which may even be a preferred way to do it since it's more stressful to hold a barrel button as you stroke.

All the 3 nibs  included in the package are of the same plastic material, as opposed to the rubbery tip that the origin Surface Pen has. It claims 150 hours continuous use and max. 230 days standby.  charge time is 4 hour at  5v 1A.  The User Manual says its stylus tips are    POM   (polyoxymethylene) and are "anti-friction".   In practice, we find the nibs to be quite slippery.   Included are two tall and two short  nibs in total.  We found the tall and short nibs to behave basically the same. 

The Heiyo also senses pressure and tilt quite well.   However, it feels a bit clunky to use in comparison with the Raphael.  This is partly due to the bigger size and partly the center of mass is well above the middle point of the pen body.  Shifting the point of holding toward to pen top would help, but then thew barrel buttons may be a bit far from reach of your thumb.

One point to note is that both Raphael and   Heiyo  go to sleep and you need to press their button to wake them up.   We found it  a bit annoying at first, since we are used to the original Surface Pen that is 'always on'.   But we get used to always pressing a button before stroking with these new pens now. ​

 We saw one Surface Pen alternative from Taobao that resemble a pencil and has this interesting magnetic charging port of the pen so that you can just snap it away when you need to charge your pen.  Unfortunately, it doesn't support tilt so we pass on that option.

However, we still fancy a magnetically charged Surface Pen, so we try to pair our pens with  Magnetic USB Charging Cable. The particular cables we bought are data cables, as opposed to power only. There're also round and flat types of such cables. We chose a round type, thinking it should match the pen bodies well. However, the flat side of the Raphael has the magnetic head extrudes a little bit, which would hit the Surface device when you snap it to the device.  Our solution is to wrap flat rubber bands to the two ends of the pen as cushion. Even without the magnetic head,  I think it's still good to have rubber bands   since the top part of the Raphael is metal and over time, that may also scratch your Surface device.  

They work well, as long as charging goes. However, the magnetic bud, which  is only 0.5g, adds  weight to the very top of the Raphael 520 pen, shifting the balance towards the top. With the bud attached, I have to hold the pen further up to maintain balance.  

It's okay to leave both the Raphael and the Heiyo connected, since both of them are protected from over-charge (we asked the manufacturers and they assured us this).

Both the   Raphael 520 and the Heiyo are great alternatives to the original Surface Pen, for their much lower prices and giving very good stroking performance.   They are also rechargeable so you don't need to hunt hard-to-find AAAA batteries. This is arguably better or worse, since you can also buy rechargeable   AAAA batteries that you can replace instead of needing to put the pen to rest during recharge.   Built-in rechargeable battery has a life-span too, and when they die, you can't simply replace them easily like you can with rechargeable   AAAA batteries .

We highly recommend the Raphael 520, for its price, build quality, magnetic attachment and performance.  It's almost perfect. The only downsides are  1. tilt is not sensed when erase button is pressed. 2. not the best in getting thin lines to tapper at stroke ends.  One minor negative point is that it's metal-hitting-metal when you snap it to the device. We hope   Renaisser  can  consider making the plastic cover at the top longer, so that it can act as a cushion (along with the plastic side buttons), just like the original Surface Pen. We also like the fact they include both soft and hard nibs, so that users can try and see which they like better.  

 We do not recommend the Heiyo as much, since it's pricier and does not support magnetic attachment.  Its body is mainly metal, so we also do not want to just put it on our Surface Book 2. Surface devices do get scratches so we want to avoid metal-to-metal  clinking. We also  wish they include spare nibs that give more tangible difference.   

BTW, note that these pens sense tilt only when they touch the surface.  This is a real downside for us Expresii users since we need to see the virtual brush posture before hitting the paper so that we know how the stroke starts. In this regard, these battery powered 'active' pens compare unfavorably against those EMR pens offered by e.g Wacom, Huion and XP-Pen. 
​
FYI,  we did not get any sponsorship or commission in this review and our opinions are entirely ours. 

Keyboard  are good for shortcuts, but sometimes we prefer to use a knob for more intuitive and smoother operation. The Surface Dial  ($100) was designed for such a purpose. However, the Surface Dial doesn't lend itself to muscle memory - the only operations are rotate and press so you need to rely on mode change in order to invoke more than 3 actions. That's why people like compact controllers with more buttons like the TourBox  ($158 at Amazon)  or the Clip studio TabMate    ($57) so that they can control more parameters   swiftly  without worrying about which mode they're in.

Controllers like TourBox are great to use but a bit expensive. Any alternatives that are less expensive but still give us a dial? 

We found  numerous USB volume controllers on the market. Among them, devices from iwit caught our attention  since their inexpensive knobs can actually be programmed to send custom keystrokes. They can even simulate a Surface Dial! This is a Chinese company in Beijing and they sell in Taobao (from $10)  for the Chinese market but various resellers are reselling them at Amazon or EBay (big version available at e.g. as this item at  Amazon for $31, small version at EBay for $20, big or small at Aliexpress for $20-$30).  The two we got are small ones.

The weight is just right and together with the non-skid pad it doesn't move around.  The knob on the silver one was not level when it arrived, but we managed to pull the knob out and after plugging it back it stayed leveled.   The design is simple and the knob clicks and rotates well making   It almost a fidget toy.   ​∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿ The iWit dials are notched so they don't rotate as smoothly as the Surface Dial.  They are also smaller and don't have a indention like the Shuttle Express   ($60)  does making them less suited for one-finger operation.

Programmability is not advertised but it is there.   I chatted with the seller at Taobao, who said they don't want to advertise it to avoid the trouble of providing customer support.   Why?  They said their way to program the device  can be confusing so they would rather just sell it as a simple, single-purpose USB volume controller.   ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

How to Program. The way  you program them is special. You use the app Notepad as the  display and let the device print a menu that you can choose from.  Make sure you use   EN_US keyboard layout for this.   To enter setup mode, press the iwit dial while you plug it to a computer via USB.  You should have Notepad already open and in focus when you do this so that Notepad receives all the key output from the iwit.   The rest is simply to navigate the menu with the dial itself. Each can be programmed to give different keystrokes independent of each other and thus you can connect multiple iwit knobs and have them control different things  (a bit like Palette ($330 for a Travel Console)). This is what the Surface Dial can't do, as multiple devices would only map to the same Dial API.   The same goes for ordinary USB volume controllers, since all of them would map to the same volume +/- mute keys.

If you want to control different apps without having to reprogram, you can do so  with Autohotkey, which can remap the input keys  according to the foreground app.  This requires you to do some coding with Autohotkey though.

Granted, this setup UI is not the most user-friendly, but it gets the job done. If you prefer a more user-friendly setup procedure, you probably would prefer a TourBox   ($158) ​ or a designer keyboard ($90). Taobao users would have more options like this keyboard   (RMB 399 = $56) or this dial (RMB 138 = $20) that allow custom key assignments.   Iwit also offers a  larger video editing controller    (RMB 799 = $113) at Taobao featuring a knob, a shutter ring and a dial (see photo right), but again you have to deal with their special setup UI.

Personally I'm quite happy with using a keyboard with my non-dominate hand  for hotkeys.   In Expresii, we have made common tasks like undo and redo easier:  we have Z and X as hotkeys for them so that you only need to press one key, as opposed to Ctrl-Z or Ctrl-Y which requires some finger twisting.  We still support standard multi-key  commands like Ctrl-Z and Ctrl-Y for undo and redo so that, if you're new to Expresii, those familiar key commands you got used to are still there.

That said, the only missing piece from my standard keyboard is a dial. Or, a few dials. So, I put the two iwit dials besides my keyboard. Because they are wired and the connectors stick out, I can only put them side-by-side. One knob controls Brush Wetness (hotkeys Q W)  and the other Pigment Adjuster (hotkeys , .).   And I still have more assignments available for operations of knob short press, long press, and knob rotation while pressed. So, a total of 6 assignments    per controller.

In the future, we may add the support for using multiple mice on the same computer, so that you can use your spare mice's buttons and wheels for controlling different settings in Expresii. Leave us a comment to let us  know how you like this plan.

Microsoft added the ability to add custom tools for different apps for Surface Dial.  Here is a little walk-through of such a process.  To get to the right setting page, type 'Wheel' in the search bar and choose 'Wheel Settings'.  Then see the following screenshots for guidance:

This is also  useful if you have a device that mimics a Surface Dial , such as the   iwit knob we review here and the   Huion Q620M .   Hers is an example usage of the custom tool with Expresii:

The iwit USB volume controller is a great choice if you want to add a couple of dials to complement your keyboard. They are inexpensive but reasonably well made. We thought of using multiple mice for their  wheels, but this is not the same as a dial: you cannot keep rotating a mouse wheel like you can with circular motion for a dial.   When do you need such a motion? Rotating the paper like this.   ​(^.~)☆