Can you switch to and from the keyboard just as fast or even faster than with a mouse?

See my answer above.

For short typing sequences I retain the pen between the thumb and the palm while touch typing and the switching between keyboard and pointer is faster than with a mouse or trackball.

Before typing a long text, I drop the pen on the tablet and I pick it up later, which takes about the same time as releasing then grabbing again a mouse or a trackball.

I was thinking about something like this for some time as well... care to elaborate? do you pick up the pen every time you switch from keyboard to "mouse" or do you have some type of ring holder?

The tablet, which has about the same size as a traditional mouse pad, has a concave space at the upper ridge, where you drop the pen when switching to the keyboard.

However, the pen is very light and I can retain it between the fingers without it limiting much the movements of the fingers. Because of that, if I have to type only a few words between some pointing actions I do not bother to drop the pen, but I touch type with the pen still between the fingers of my right hand. If I have to type more than one sentence, I drop the pen on the tablet and I pick it up again after finishing typing.

This actually makes on average the switching of the right hand between typing and pointing less distracting than with a mouse, because the heavier mouse must be released and grabbed after that, even when typing a single letter, which takes more time than moving the hand holding the pen between tablet and keyboard (especially now, after I have recently switched to a narrower ergonomic keyboard, without numeric pad, where the movement of the right hand is minimized).

The left mouse click is done by touching the tablet with the pen. The pen has 2 buttons for the thumb, which can be mapped to various events. I map one button to be the right mouse click and the other to be the double left mouse click.

I just dump my pen in the gap between the function keys and number keys.

I still have a mouse, so for quick stuff I tend to use that. but when I want to give my right hand a rest, or if I am doing precision stuff (ie copy pasting with small fonts, or drawing/CAD) then I use the table in absolute mode( that is the top right of the tablet is always top right of the screen)

Nice to see this here. I’ve using a tablet for cursor movement since around 2010, and I find it amazing except for one small issue I’ve never been able to solve: tapping with the pen in order to click is finicky, because if I even drag a few pixels during the tap, it turns into a drag gesture.

Right now I’m using a Huion tablet, which does not appear to allow customizing the drag-to-disable-click distance. Is there any Mac utility that would work for this?

I believe that there should be a way to increase the drag-and-drop threshold that is independent of the pointing device that happens to be used.

I have stopped using MacOS many years ago, so I do not know how this is done there, but on Linux I always increase the drag-and-drop threshold, because on high-resolution displays this can be a problem even with traditional mice, not only with tablets.

came here looking for this. i would HIGHLY recommend trying this if you, like me, suffer from wrist pain due to extended mouse use

Yes, my searches have also been initially been motivated by incipient problems with the wrist (and with the middle finger, caused by the scrolling wheel).

All hand discomfort has disappeared after switching to a tablet with pen and the fact that pointing with a pen is much faster and more accurate than with a mouse has been an unexpected bonus.

What kind of usage do you do with your pointer? I find that with code editing, it's annoying to pick up / put down the stylus all the time.

Have you tried a vertical mouse? That is the best for me: comfortable, yet mouse-y :)

With code editing, I keep the pen between the thumb and the palm while touch typing, which works because the pen is very light, so you can almost forget that you are still holding it.

This allows much faster transitions between typing and pointing than with a mouse.

I have not tried a vertical mouse, but I agree that it is likely to solve most of the comfort problems caused by a classic mouse.

Nevertheless, there is no chance for it to be as fast and accurate as a pen. With the pen I can point to any place on the screen pretty much instantaneously and using a negligible muscular force, due to its lightness.

My ideal device would be one where the pen is in absolute mode, but you can also use it as a touchpad in relative mode with your fingers.

Not sure about other OSes, but I occasionally use a Wacom Bamboo Pen&Touch (CTH-470) on Linux, and I have it set up to do exactly that. It's really easy to configure it with the KDE settings plugin thingy, but I think that just talks to the Linux Wacom drivers, so it should be possible to do something like this with other DEs too (if it isn't even the default). It's also trivial to set one the hardware buttons to do sruff like send Ctrl+Z or toggle the touch input on and off, which is nice. Plus, they're really cheap to buy used, I bought two for like 15€.

It's not without problems, I personally don't like the pointer speed / acceleration, scrolling and zooming are way too sensitive, and palm rejection isn't too great (it pretty much just disables touch whenever the pen is near the surface). However, I have put exactly zero effort into customising the first two things, so these might be fixable, and for me the latter isn't a huge problem because I don't use the pen and the touchpad together a lot, so having a toggle button as mentioned before works just fine for me.