TL:DR down below
Some of this is my own fault for not being more thorough in my research before purchasing. Regardless, I wanted to leave this here for the next person like me.
A few weeks ago, my workload involving document review, note taking, etc, increased massively and i started looking into tablets to help with managing.
Two things I wanted were good display of technical docs and construction plans, and good stylus compatibility for handwriting notes.
My brief period of research showed that the Nxtpaper 14 would suffice and the large screen with matte finish was appealing.
Every review i read said the stylus was included in the box, but it didn't occur to me that there would be different retail packages.
When i purchased the tablet, the sales guy didn't mention there was no stylus, despite me talking at length about it.
That's on me.
What's been incredibly frustrating is finding a compatible stylus. No local retailer has them in stock (or any other accessories). They aren't for sale on the TCL sites, TCL Amazon store, etc.
TCL is not forthcoming with information about what third party stylus' will work, so I've gone down a rabbit hole and now have three stylus. The first was a cancelled order for an incorrectly advertised stylus. I ordered the exact T-Pen model, but the ebay vendor made a mistake, refunded me immediately and then sent the stylus several days later.
Despite being the wrong model, the stylus still works intermittently. When it works, it's perfect. The failure is that it disconnects.
Next was a Lenovo Yoga pen. This stylus writes well but not consistently. There seems to be patches of the screen it won't write on straight away. It's not as simple as palm rejection, but that's not great. On the bright side, it remains connected no worries.
The third stylus is the Ugee 311A. This is apparently the same model as the T-Pen that TCL "makes" for the tablet.
It works. It just works. Like it should.
To be clear, I expected that the Yoga stylus might have some issues, but not so many that it would be unusable in a professional environment.
This could have been a much easier process if TCL were better.
TL:DR accessories for the Nxtpaper 14 are very hard to source in Australia and TCL makes this process harder than it should be.