Inspiron 5491, No supported Active Pen

Well even though Dell themselves did close to nothing to deserve this (figuratively put me through stuff in order to find out all this), and I actually had to buy an Active Pen just to do the tests myself, before I even knew it would work, since Dell were pretty useless in that regard.

So again, this information is unofficial and I personally guarantee nothing although at least in the case of the Inspiron 5491 you can be pretty certain.

First - The PN350M is compatible with the laptop, if you look hard enough on Dell's website it is written there (there is an asterisk after the "Active Pen Support" that if you press it will say the PN350M is supported)

Second - The PN579X is compatible with the laptop. You will not find this information anywhere on Dell's website, and you will not be able to get a Dell employee to say it is supported (because it is not on any of their lists) but I have bought the pen last week and have been using it ever since.

Both these pens (and MANY MANY OTHER ACTIVE PENS) work with this laptop (and will probably work with various other laptops by Dell and by other companies who I hope actually update their compatibility lists) because they use a protocol called "MPP" (Microsoft Pen Protocol). It is one of two main protocols used by Active Pens and touchscreens (on Windows) - the Microsoft MPP and the Wacom AES. So if you are having trouble understanding which pens your laptop might support, check if the screen uses MPP panel technology or supports Wacom AES (Checking this might be the only place where a Dell employee can help you, but at least for me they didn't really help with this). Specifically these pens support both MPP and Wacom so chances are they will work with your laptop if you have an Active Pen supporting touchscreen.

Now for a bit of a review of which features of the PN579X actually work, and why some does not:

- Bluetooth connection - The first thing you want to do is connect the pen to your laptop via Bluetooth, works fine, displays the battery level as it should and remains connected with not interruptions.

- Buttons - All buttons work well, including the click \ double click \ long press on the top button and both barrel buttons, all responsive and do what they should (they are sometimes not really that snappy but it seems more like a general issue rather than a compatibility thing)

- Writing - Works perfectly, including pressure sensitivity, although I suspect you don't get the full 4000 levels, but this is true for all laptops that use this pen with MPP even if they are supported (And I guess that if you are an artist you are not using these two products so it should not be an issue)

- Customization - Now for the only issue with the pen. Button customization is done in two ways: For the top button it is done through the windows ink settings and works great, you can customize just about anything about it. On the other hand, the two barrel buttons can only be customized using the "Active Pen Control Panel" software on the Dell website, but since your laptop is not on the "compatibility list", the Control Panel just won't install. Not saying it would not work if you somehow got it to install, it actually might work perfectly were you to get it installed somehow - but since nobody bothered to add the model-number of your laptop to A LIST! this feature will not work.

In summary - as long as you are fine with the default barrel-buttons settings, feel free to buy this pen.

Good luck to the end-clients and to Dell.

Dell just released a new "Dell Pen Compatibility Brochure" which carries a creation date of 11/27/2019.

It lists both the Dell Premium Active Pen PN579X and Dell Active Pen PN350M as being compatible with the Inspiron 5491 2-in-1.

Maybe they will now update the Active Pen Control Panel customization software to work with the PN579X, but I for one won't be holding my breath.

Just got the pn350m and it works like charm.Tried it with Microsoft whiteboard, One note and Sketchbook Pro. Very fast and resposnive.

PN579X will also work but you wont benefit its functionality as 4096 level pressure sensitivity and Wacom features so its a waste of money.

So I suggest you go for the pn350m

Regards