Microsoft’s new Surface Pen debuted alongside the new Surface Pro and Type Covers at an event last month. But unlike those other devices, the new Surface Pen was not available for preorder until today.

And I hope you want Platinum, because it’s the only color you can preorder now from the Microsoft Store website: Burgundy, Black, and Cobalt Blue are still unavailable.

This weird availability issue is only one of a few things you should know about the new Surface Pen.

For starters, it’s more expensive than the outgoing version. A new Surface Pen will set you back $99, the same price as Apple’s iPad Pro-compatible Pencil. But that’s $30 more than the previous version.

The new Surface Pen is much improved over its predecessor, however. It offers 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity, which is a 4X improvement. It also supports tilt now, so that you can shade sketches and create thicker lines as you would with a real pencil.

The new Surface Pen will work with most previous Surface devices: Surface 3, Surface Pro, Surface Pro 2, Surface Pro 3, Surface Pro 4, Surface Book, and Surface Studio are all supported.

But the new Surface Pen works best with the new Surface Pro, offering even better performance than with the other devices. And oddly, it works less well on Surface Laptop, where the tilt functionality is not supported.

And it’s not clear when the other colors will be available, sorry.

Tagged with Surface Pen