ESR has made a name for itself making affordable and fairly reliable accessories for Apple products. The brand’s iPad gear and charging devices have been a mainstay on my desk over the years.
At CES 2025, the company has yet another surprise. The latest from ESR is the Geo Digital Pencil. On the surface, it looks like any other third-party stylus shaped after the Apple Pencil USB-C model. But it hides a neat lost-and-found trick.
ESR’s Geo Digital Pencil adds support for Apple’s Find My network, which is quite a surprise, considering the sticker price worth $30 apiece. So far, only the Apple Pencil Pro has offered Find My support, but it costs a hefty $129 at the moment.
Find My is one of the best features available across the Apple ecosystem, and thanks to the expansive global network, it is relatively easy to locate lost or misplaced items.
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For context, the cheapest Apple device with the Find My convenience is the AirTag, which itself matches the asking price of the new ESR stylus. This budget stylus, however, does a lot more than just serve the Find My perk. It charges via a USB-C port but can attach magnetically to the side of an iPad, which means you don’t have to worry about the stylus rolling off a table or having to safely keep it in another loop or slot.
A full charge only takes about half an hour and offers a mileage of 12 hours worth of uninterrupted usage. Other features in its arsenal include tilt recognition and palm rejection.
There’s also a shortcut button at the top, which accepts single- and double-tap gestures. I’ve grown quite fond of this button ever since I got one of ESR’s older stylus models for the 10th-gen iPad.
As far as compatibility goes, it works with every iPad model launched after 2018, save for the current-gen base model iPad. The ESR Geo Digital Pencil comes in three colors — white, pink, and black — and it is already available from Amazon.
Another neat accessory launched by ESR at CES is the HaloLock Classic Hybrid Case for the iPhone 16 series. This MagSafe-ready transparent case features a camera bump rail that also doubles as a kickstand.
The more intriguing aspect, however, is a dedicated cover for the Camera Control button. On a majority of protective covers, the Camera Control button is left exposed, which makes it cumbersome to access the slide gestures, especially if the case is thick.
The Camera Control shield on the ESR case features 9H tempered glass on top and a PCB core with half a dozen capacitive stacks underneath. The tri-layer structure avoids any gaps that can hinder the functionality while also keeping dust and other elements at bay.
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