Apple’s New USB-C Apple Pencil Gets Its First Discount for Black Friday – CNET [CNET]

Now just $71, it’s the perfect pickup to go with your Black Friday iPad purchase.

If you took the opportunity to upgrade your iPad this Black Friday, now’s your chance to bag an essential Apple accessory for less. The Apple Pencil with USB-C is down to just $71 at Amazon. This is the first discount on this recently-announced stylus, dropping it down to a new record-low price. 

The Pencil with USB-C is already designed to be a low-cost alternative to Apple’s other Pencil models, especially for users of the entry-level 10th-generation iPad. Since that iPad is $100 off for Black Friday, it’s likely that a lot of folks will have pounced on it this weekend making this a perfectly-timed accessory discount. 

It features the same low latency and tilt sensitivity as the second-generation Apple Pencil, but eschews some of the fanciest features to come in at a lower price. For example, it lacks things like pressure sensitivity and wireless pairing and charging. It also doesn’t have the double-tap feature for switching between tools. That being said, it can still attach magnetically to the side of your iPad for easy transportation and you can use it with the Hover feature built into iPadOS. 

The Apple Pencil lineup is a bit confusing right now, but the simplest way to figure out which iPad will work with the USB-C Pencil is to check what port the iPad itself has. If the iPad has a USB-C connector, it will work with the USB-C Apple Pencil. As well as the 10th-gen model, that also includes the fourth- and fifth-gen iPad Air, the 11-inch iPad Pro, the sixth-gen iPad Mini and the third-gen 12.9-inch iPad Pro and later, making it an ideal pairing with the many Black Friday iPad deals we’ve seen over the last few days. 

If you do want the fully-featured Apple Pencil 2, you can nab one for $89 at Amazon — that’s $40 off. Be aware, though, that the Apple Pencil 2 does not support the 10th-gen iPad and will only work with recent iPad Pro, iPad Air and iPad Mini models.