Mark,
The non-pro pencil should work better… did you go into the iPad settings and then go into the pencil settings (make sure the pencil is in the iPad magnetic charger on the iPad) to access all the settings. Are there settings that can be disabled on the non-pro pencil when you look at the settings? My pencil pro was almost unusable until I disabled:
ACTIONS
squeeze, double tap,
EFFECTS
hover, haptics,
PENCIL GESTURES
bottom left corner, bottom right corner
Dave