Cosmonaut: Wide-Grip Stylus for Capacitive Touch Screens

by Studio Neat

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 1.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• ASIN: B007EW9ISM
• Item model number: COS001AL
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (147 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,963 in Cell Phones & Accessories (See Top 100 in Cell Phones & Accessories)
  • #49 in Cell Phones & Accessories > Accessories > Styli

Product Description

The Cosmonaut is a minimal and elegant stylus for touch screen devices, like the iPad. Unlike most styli, which are designed to look and feel like a pen, the Cosmonaut was designed to feel like a dry erase marker, because the experience of drawing on an tablet most closely mirrors the experience of drawing on a whiteboard. The Cosmonaut is great for doodling, sketching, and writing on any touch screen device. The shaft has a comfortable rubber grip that feels great to hold for people of all ages, including children and the elderly. The tip is responsive and glides effortlessly over the glass screen. The Cosmonaut will work on nearly any capacitive touch screen device, including the iPad and Kindle Fire. It does not require special software; it will work wherever your finger works. Designed and manufactured in America.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 44 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The best stylus for the iPad for note taking April 18, 2012

By Ali Ezad Abbas

I had been following the cosmonaut project on kickstarter and bought this stylus the day it came out. I have been using it since primarily for note taking and jotting down ideas on my iPad. It is perfect in that role. The board marker style grip and the weight and bulk just feel right. There is a slight air gap between the tip of the stylus and the rubber coating and you need to push down a little for the touch to be registered. This saves you from generating inadvertent touch events.

This stylus, however, is not the best option if you are in to sketching or drawing. It's ok for quick figures and graphs but anything more involved and you'll find that the constant pushing down of the tip to register the touch becomes tiring.

To sum it up, its best suited for note taking but average for drawing.

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great stylus for hand written notes, drawing, or just avoiding ugly finger streaks! May 24, 2012

By Viv

Amazon Verified Purchase

I love this stylus! I mainly purchased it because it was the only stylus that didn't have the "broke in 2 weeks" reviews. EVERY other stylus I looked at, even ones with 4 star average ratings, had at least 3 reviews which said that the stylus broke in little time. I wanted a durable stylus since they're not cheap. I really really love this stylus. I love the name, the feeling, the shape, the texture, the size, everything. It's obvious that the stylus was made from quality materials.

I've written full page notes with this and it's like using a felt tip marker on paper, so smooth and easy to handle. It just glides over the glass on my new Ipad. I find any excuse to use it just because I really like using it, I know that sounds weird but it's true. I'm a 21 year old college girl who will use this mainly for writing notes in class but I draw for fun and the Cosmonaut is great for both. Also, I think the durability is awesome enough to be able to give to children, I really can't picture this thing falling apart at all. Watch the "How it's made" video that was on "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood", it's on the Cosmonaut website. If it's good enough for mr. Roger then it's definitely good enough for me.

Best of all, they're MADE IN AMERICA.

In case you're shopping for a notes app, I use notability with this stylus and really like it.

***edited after a month of use***
The customer that gave a four star review must be using a sub par drawing app. At first I didn't comment on intensive use for drawing with the stylus because I hadn't really drawn anything incredibly detailed but now I have. I use sketchbook and I've been able to draw awesomely well with the Cosmonaut. I wish Amazon allowed for photo attachments so that I could show a drawing that I have finally completed after an entire day of drawing with the Cosmonaut.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Best iPad stylus for notes and homework, bar none. June 25, 2012

By M. Zhao

If you are looking for a stylus to take notes or do homework with, this is it. Its exceptional build quality, sturdy design, and predictability make it the best writing and graphing stylus you can buy.

The Cosmonaut isn't based on some fancy, next gen capacitative technology; and that's a good thing. Its lack of features is actually its best feature. There's nothing to replace, no electronic pressure sensing to glitch out or distract you, just pure, stylus functionality. It's all about the writing, swiping, and tapping and really, that's all that matters. Furthermore, its simplicity also makes it durable. Take tough aluminum and wrap it in even tougher rubber. This thing is built to last. Other rubber and mesh tipped styluses I bought started cracking or otherwise failing after about a month of hard use, this stylus just refuses to quit.

I used the Cosmonaut for an entire quarter of college, which involved nightly math homework assignments, daily note taking, annotating more PDFs than I care to recall, and a whole lot of just screwing about on a tablet. I used it to write sentences and equations,to draw graphs and diagrams, and also to just navigate around the tablet interface. It excelled at all tasks. There is little to no friction with the screen surface (unlike cheaper rubber styluses) and even better, its stiffer tip makes it a lot more predictable and easy to control. Other rubber tipped styluses, even expensive ones like the Wacom Bamboo, simply compress too much when they're being used. This makes it somewhat difficult to figure out exactly where the line will show up. This is not a problem with the Cosmonaut.

There are those who will say that if you want accuracy, you should go with the Adonit Jot, and if you are a professional artist who must know *exactly* where your line is being drawn down to the last pixel, well yeah, nothing beats being able to see the line as it's being drawn. But for the rest of us, the additional hassle of having to deal with replacement disks and a noisy writing experience is simply not worth it. Besides, the Cosmonaut is pretty good at drawing too. I'm not a serious artist by any means but I do dabble in sketches from time to time and I've had no problems with the Cosmonaut's lack of transparent tip. It's simply predictable to the point where that ceases to matter.

That being said, it's not perfect. While I like the wide-bodied design, I personally think it's ergonomics would benefit from a slightly smaller diameter. This would also help with its other problem: weight. As far as I can tell, it's machined out of a solid chunk of aluminum, which is great for durability--it also gives it a satisfying heft. But you really feel that extra ounce or two after an hour straight of note-taking. Future iterations would benefit from a drilled-out aluminum core. In fact, I'm thinking about doing this myself with my friend's drill press.

All in all, the Cosmonaut is as good a stylus as you're going to find on today's market. Its bare-bones design might turn some people off because there are more feature-rich styluses available at cheaper prices, but really, this is the one to get. Its predictability alone puts it head and shoulders above the competition and its durability only elevates it further.

4.5/5 stars (this system doesn't support half stars unfortunately)

Pros:
+Predictable writing and drawing
+Super durable design
+Little to no screen friction
+Simple, effective design that gets out of the way

Cons:
-It's a bit fatter and heavier than I'd like in a writing implement