Motorola Pen Ultra

Unveiled at CES 2026, Motorola has added the 'moto pen ultra' to its accessories list for owners of the Signature and Razr Fold. In the UK, the pen is bundled with the Razr Fold, but your region may vary on that. As a Signature owner, I had to buy one separately and it cost £49. It is pretty hard to get hold of one at the moment, but I was lucky and landed on Moto's UK online shop on just the right day!

My review of the Motorola Signature is linked here and, since it first arrived, I have gazed longingly at the greyed-out "Smart pen, Manage pen features" item in the phone's main Settings! Well, it is here now - and as I say, good luck getting one at the moment anyway - with Moto pitching it as a high-performance smart stylus. Unlike the basic capacitive styluses found in the Moto G Stylus series, the Pen Ultra is a "professional-grade tool featuring pressure sensitivity, tilt detection and palm rejection". Apparently!

So, the Pen Ultra adds functions not dissimilar to Samsung's S-Pen - well, the older one that had Bluetooth, Air Actions, and remote shutter capabilities. It is noteworthy to mention that Samsung's more recent S-Pens are missing these features and more. As Samsung decides to pull away from the notion based on user feedback and usage, Lenovorola moves in and is all over it. Late to the party, but filling a current void. The same thing happened with Samsung and its Windows-based DeX functionality; Motorola moved in with Smart Connect and did it well - even better, arguably, than Samsung ever did.

One thing that the S-series Samsung Ultra models do have, which Moto lacks on these two models, is a silo to put the pen into. Moto has a silo on its G Stylus series, so maybe they will think about that for the next generation of devices. Samsung, being so globally popular, also has the benefit of third-party case-makers (as well as their own) designing covers with some sort of pen-holding function. These are often unwieldy, however, and feel 'bolted on' rather than looking like they are a part of the device, unless one goes for a thick, ruggedised case. Either way, there is scope for improvement and plenty of food for thought.

What the Pen Ultra does come with, however, is a holder/charger with a silo of its own! You slide the pen into the case's silo and it charges the pen up. The pen lasts about 3 hours out of the case, and with a fully charged case, there is potentially 27 hours of use. So, if it is all topped up, the user should in theory be able to charge the pen a further 8 times before the case needs plugging in again. Sounds like a pretty good compromise to me. If the pen is not being used but is out of the case, it does go to sleep in a standby mode, sipping the battery. And let's face it, who is going to use it constantly for 3 hours at a time anyway, I muse!

So, I am OK with that. It is just that, yes, you have to take it with you - the pen and/or the case - and if you do want to charge it away from base, you will need some means of plugging a charger into the case's USB-C port to do so. There is no charger in the box (at least in this UK release). The case is made of hard plastic, but the outside material is much like Moto has been using on some of its phones lately, including the Signature: a soft-touch, cloth-like fabric finish. Nice. Room for improvement might be the use of a material that Velcro will stick to. That would open up some great portability possibilities.

The 'moto pen ultra' (note the lowercase styling) is a bit small for my liking. If it is not going to fit inside a silo in the phone, then there is no real reason that it couldn't be the size of, say, the S-Pen Pro rather than a toothpick! Those with small hands will be OK, but I have big ones, and it feels a lot like the hunt-and-peck experiences of 2004 with PDA/phone units such as the i-mate JAM! So, if you are going to have a silo, fine - make it fit. But if not, make it a 'proper' pen/pencil size, Moto.

As an aside, it doesn't seem to work beyond invoking the on-screen circular carousel menu when the Signature is Qi wireless charging. It works fine if it is cable-charging, so I wasn't sure what that was about! Gemini reckons it is down to the fact that the pen is an active stylus, and both systems rely on magnetic induction. When the phone is on a wireless pad, the pad's internal coil generates a continuous, alternating magnetic field. This field pumps energy directly through the back of the phone into its receiving coil to juice up the battery. The phone's screen contains a digitised grid that emits its own tiny, precise magnetic field to track the pen’s nib location, pressure sensitivity, and hover distance. When you place the phone on a Qi pad, that massive, high-frequency charging field completely drowns out the delicate signals from the display's digitiser. The circular on-screen carousel menu still works, basically, because it is fired up and connects via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). The button click that summons the quick-access carousel menu is a standard Bluetooth command, and Bluetooth operates on a completely different high-frequency radio spectrum which easily cuts right through the low-frequency magnetic noise of the Qi pad. How did we live life without Gemini, eh!

One thing that is immediately missing from the pen experience here, that Samsung had, is firing up a Quick Note from the off-screen or Always on Display. I am sure Moto could add this in a software fix, as it works fine with the G Stylus. When you fire up the S-Pen or G Stylus, you can set the phone to jump straight into note-taking mode over the top of the AoD. It works independently of the phone being 'on' and in normal use. Then you can save the note you've made, put the pen away, and the phone goes back to the AoD (or turns off). Here, it doesn't. And it might be another restriction of not having a silo, I guess. It will fire up a note-taking front-end, but if you have a PIN/Pattern/Password in use, you have to get past that first. This means that the phone is then 'open' as normal rather than sitting 'in front of' the normal lock screen interface. You press the pen's button, then tap the screen twice to invoke it. Now, in reality, the face unlock is so good (in decent enough light) that it swiftly lets you past the security anyway, but when you have finished, it doesn't go back to the AoD or turn off like the G Stylus or S-Pen. It is apparently because of a dedicated 'secure sandbox mode' built directly into the lock screen OS layers that isn't present in the Signature. It could easily be added - silo or not.

Pressure sensitivity seems to work well in the drawing mode, as do tilt detection (for shading and line-weight) and palm rejection. With Sketch-to-Image, you can draw a rough sketch and use integrated AI to transform it into an image. You don't need the pen to do this, of course - any MotoAI-equipped phone will do it - but there are obvious benefits to using a pen. You only get 6 of these generations per day, and the clock seems to reset at 1am. Quick Note lets you highlight (clip) screen content, then long-press for the option to 'add to a Note' (though to be fair, you can also do this with a finger, but I guess the accuracy is better with the pen). Circle to Search works fine, but again, a finger will do. Speed Share suggests contacts you are most likely to share your notes or annotations with - again, not pen-dependent. There is lots of stuff to play with then, some clever and pen-only, some smart without - but plenty is integrated into MotoAI. Just a quick note to say that for owners of the Razr Fold, the pen does - much like some of the far-east OEMs' implementations for pens now - work on both the outside and inside screens.

The pen utilises USI 2.0 and LPP 4.0 protocols. So what does that mean, USI and EMI, I hear you ask! They cross paths directly in how a phone's screen listens to a pen. EMI is the "noise" or static created when one electrical component generates an electromagnetic field that disrupts another nearby component. USI is a protocol (the technology) - Universal Stylus Initiative - which is an open industry hardware standard designed so that one active stylus can work across completely different brands of devices, like using the same pen seamlessly on a Google Pixel Tablet, a Lenovo Chromebook and a Motorola phone.

So why not rely purely on a standalone standard? How would that be better? It would mean users could use any one of oodles of USI 2.0 standard pens out there. As it is, Motorola has tailored this hardware specifically, meaning this is the only pen that will work correctly with these digitisers. Accuracy is great, and frankly, it seems pretty robust to me as it is! And then there is that Bluetooth in the mix. The Bluetooth 5.3 provides for remote shutter functions because it has ultra-low latency, which handles the remote commands effortlessly. If you have the camera app open, you can press the button on the pen to take a photo or video - just like the old S-Pen. But there it ends: there are no 'air actions' like Sammy had for zooming or switching things around.

The software support is found in the phone's settings. As soon as you take the pen out of its case, the phone detects it and fires up an on-screen 'button' which, when tapped, produces the carousel I mentioned earlier, on which you can assign the tools you want to have within easy reach. You also get an icon in the Status Bar indicating that the pen is 'live'. You can have 4 tools on the carousel or add apps if you like - I added Noteshelf, as I have used it cross-platform and have data in it. The moto pen ultra works perfectly well inside that too.

Pen Controls brings us to a great feature known as Knock-Knock! Turn the pen upside down, double-tap it on a surface, and it takes a screenshot! I have used this extensively while penning this review! You can then assign one action to a single-press of the pen's button - like opening the toolbar on-screen. A double-press is a bit more flexible, allowing for Annotate, New Note, Hover to Magnify (which works well, just like Sammy's - except it's a circle instead of a square) or Circle to Search (instead of having to long-press the navigation gesture bar at the foot of the screen).

Settings also allow you to see the pointer when hovering, open the toolbar when the pen is taken out, or give you a reminder if the pen is left out of the case. This can be set to various numbers of minutes, from 5 minutes up to 1 day (but actually, I can't get this out-of-case reminder to work at all - I've tested and tested it in all sorts of ways, and got nothing). There is also Last Known Location, which can be set to open in whatever mapping app you fancy to show you where you last used it, complete with coordinates. There is also an option to allow other Lenovo pens to work with the system; depending on their capabilities, that will dictate what they can do. I have a couple here and they both seem to work for basic functions, though not the higher-end ones.

As you will know if you are reading this, I'm a huge Motorola fan, but this experience does feel like it falls short of what the Samsung S-Pen can (or at least, could) do (before they stripped back some of the functionality). The relatively 'dumb' stylus of the Moto G Stylus (2024) that I have here doesn't try to have all those high-end bells and whistles, but what it does, it does in some ways more robustly. And I think that's because it has got a silo. Samsung proved that all this stuff can work well without a silo, however - look at the tablets they have produced. I have a Galaxy Tab S8 here and it works brilliantly with the magnetic connection on the back. So, it can be done. We're relying on Moto to get on and sort this out with software updates, so I won't hold my breath!

Talking of magnets, the pen attaches to the back of the Signature in one position, albeit fairly weakly, but it doesn't do anything. Now there's a thought! A future Moto device, like a Samsung tablet, that lets you at least put the pen on the back to attach magnetically and charge as an alternative to the case - or in addition to it, if they really can't work a silo into the chassis.

I do wish the pen was bigger. That is probably the main reason why I am less likely to use it, to be honest. And, as I said, if it's not tucked away in a silo, there is no structural reason why it can't be a proper size. It's a nice plaything, but I wonder how much anyone will use it for productivity in the real world. Maybe on the Razr Fold opened up, but even then, I wonder how that plastic internal screen will hold up over time.

The moto pen ultra is a fascinating release that signals Motorola's serious intent to capture the premium productivity space left behind by a complacent Samsung. At £49 in the UK - if you can track one down - the hardware itself feels like a solid compromise. The external charging case is excellently finished in Moto’s signature soft-touch fabric, providing 27 hours of total battery backup that neatly solves any low-power anxiety.

When you get the pen on the glass, the core fundamentals - pressure sensitivity, tilt detection, palm rejection and the brilliant "Knock-Knock" screenshot shortcut - work beautifully. However, the overall user experience is heavily hindered by the lack of an integrated hardware silo and a few half-baked software implementations.

The inability to use the pen accurately while the Signature is on a Qi wireless charger due to electromagnetic interference is a frustrating physical quirk. Worse still is the lack of a secure lock screen sandbox; forcing a full biometric unlock just to take a quick off-screen memo completely robs the stylus of its spontaneous, scratchpad utility. Add in a completely broken out-of-case reminder system and a toothpick-thin physical profile that will cramp larger hands, and the pen ultra starts to feel more like a luxury plaything than an essential daily workhorse.

If you own the big canvas of the Razr Fold, it is a no-brainer bundle. But for Signature owners, unless Moto commits to anchoring this premium hardware with robust, polished software updates, it remains a nice-to-have novelty rather than a productivity revolution. I've taken a load of screenshots for those who'd like to dig deeper and see them and they're now inside a Google Photos Shared Album, so feel free to click through.