Updated with discount codes for Sept 2019

A company called Simbans contacted me recently and asked if I would be interested to check out a tablet of theirs called the PicassoTab. The highlight of this tablet, I was told, is that it supports pressure sensitivity and palm rejection with the included active pen. That's actually what made me interested to review the tablet.

PicassoTab is currently selling on Amazon at US $200. I consider that to be mid-range pricing because you can get Android tablets at even cheaper prices, and of course there are more expensive Android tablets as well, such as the Samsung Tab S3 which is US $300 more expensive.

Let's take a look at the specs first.

Specifications

• Processor: Quad Core MTK8163 1.3GHz/Core
• Screen: 10.1 inch tablet. 16:9 capacitive IPS touch screen
• Resolution: 1280 x 800 pixels
• Storage: 32 GB, can be upgraded with another 32GB of micro-SD card for file storage
• RAM: 2GB
• OS: Google Nougat 7
• Camera: 2.0 M Front Camera and 5.0 Back Camera
• Connectivity: WiFi (IEEE802.11b/g/n), Bluetooth and GPS
• Applications Google Apps (Gmail, YouTube etc) and Google PLAY (use it to download FREE Games and apps)
• Ports: Ports: Mini-HDMI, USB Type-C, Audio, Micro-SD Card Slot

Things included

The tablet comes with a case, an active pen, universal power adaptor and screen protector what's already applied.

That's the faux leather case with a surprisingly thick cover front and back to provide ample of protection for the tablet.

The cover uses magnets to snap close. Unfortunately, there's no auto-sleep function when the cover is closed, so you have to remember to power off the tablet before closing to conserve battery life, or set your table to auto-sleep after a few minutes.

The case also doubles as a stand but it only has one position.

On the side of the case is a pen holder.

This is the active pen included. It's said to support 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity and palm rejection. More on that later. The pen does not require Bluetooth to work.

The build quality of the pen is surprisingly good. It feels quite premium and has a nice weight.

The tip is those hard plastic tip and is quite slippery while drawing. So it definitely takes a while to get used to controlling it.

The pen is powered by one AAA battery and is always on by default. I'm not sure of the battery life though. If the battery life is something like the Microsoft Surface Pen, then it's going to last for months.

There are no shortcut buttons on the pen.

Replacement tips are available for sale on Simban's website.

The overall build quality of the tablet feels solid enough. It's not quite as premium or classy compared to more expensive tablets obviously but it doesn't look too bad either. The bezels are a bit thick but not really a downside.

The tablet is thin enough but once you put it the case on, it's much thicker. At the bottom of the tablet are some connection interface, probably for an external keyboard.

These are the ports located on the sides: Micro SD card reader, 3.5mm headphone jack, mini HDMI and a Type-C power and data port.

If you find the included 32gb storage to be limiting, you can expand it with your own Micro SD card. Interestingly, there's a mini HDMI port so if you want to connect the tablet to a monitor or TV, you can do so. No mini-HDMI to HDMI cable is included though. Since I don't have the necessary cable, I can't tell if the tablet is able to power a screen that has higher resolution than it.

Speakers are located on both sides and the quality isn't that good. They sound like they are placed too far inside the tablet.

Further along the same side, there are the volume buttons and power button.

The back is matte surface and nice to touch, but if you're using the case then it's not going to matter. Oh, there's a camera on the back, and in front.

The screen

The 10.1-inch screen uses an IPS panel and has a resolution of 1280 x 800. The resolution isn't particular high for a screen like this so there's definitely visible pixelation. Even 5-inch smartphones nowadays have 1920 x 1080 resolution. The lower resolution is still usable but it would have been better if it has higher resolution.

The screen protector that's already applied is the glossy reflective type. It feels quite slippery when drawing on it with the pen.

Colour reproduction and viewing angles are quite decent. There's no mention of how bright the screen is. I'm using it at 50% brightness and that's quite satisfactory to me.

Android OS

The Android OS version included is version 7, Nougat. That's quite a recent version of Android. It looks like stock Android to me because there aren't any customized interface other than the ugly looking wallpaper that I replaced quickly.

One good thing I like is Simbans has not loaded the tablet with any bloatware. The only pre-installed app is Autodesk Sketchbook and that's the app that they recommend for use with this tablet.

Performance is generally quite snappy. It doesn't feel as fast compared to more expensive Android tablet, but it definitely does not lag. The 2GB RAM that's included will definitely limited the number of apps you can have in the background without making the system lag though. Having 10 apps in the background is about the maximum it can go before the system starts to show first signs of lag.

I would consider the overall user experience to be satisfactory, something I would expect from a budget tablet at this price range.

And here are the downsides.

For some reason, certain apps can't be installed. For example, I wasn't able to install PayPal. Most of the other drawing apps are fine. I've installed ArtRage, ArtFlow, Adobe Sketch, Adobe Draw, Bamboo Paper, INKredible, Medibang, Painter and OneNote.

There's no auto-brightness feature in this Android version.

Drawing performance

Drawing performance depends on the app you use.

While the tablet is marketed to support palm rejection, it doesn't work that well. That's because the pen has to be really close to the screen (not touching it) for the palm rejection to work. When the pen tip is really close to the screen while using Autodesk Sketchbook, and only that app, a hovering cursor appears. When I'm drawing, sometimes my palm will touch the screen first, sometimes the pen will touch the screen first. As a result, it's unavoidable to have stray strokes caused by my palm which are those dots you see in the drawing above.

Pressure sensitivity works relatively well. But I don't think it's as sensitive as 1024 levels that it claims to support. The initial activation force is minimal. As long as the tip touches the screen, you will get a line.

Unfortunately the pen does suffer from the slow diagonal line jitter. It's a problem that plagues many tablet styluses so I'm not surprised to see it here as well. So to get smooth strokes, you have to draw faster. For quick sketches, it's not going to be much of a problem, just remember to raise your palm from the screen to prevent stray strokes.

Artflow seems to have a slightly better handle on the slow diagonal line jitter issue. The curves even look smoother. It's like the app has programmed to smoothen out lines.

Here's a sketch that I drew on location with ArtFlow. Pressure sensitivity works well with ArtFlow. Because palm rejection does not work that well (with most apps), I had to prevent my palm from touching the screen, which wasn't too difficult because I could rest my palm on the side of the case.

The only tricky part when sketching that picture above is the screen was quite slippery so you have to make a more conscious effort to control the pen. If you're someone who likes to sketch fast and loose, it may not be an issue. The other tricky part was dealing with the slight parallax at certain angles, but again, it's not a major problem because in the end, I was still able to get the lines where I want them to be. I've used other styluses before where the parallax is so bad that it's almost impossible to draw. That's not the situation here thankfully.

Medibang Paint Pro also suffers from the slow diagonal line jitter problem. Compare the diagonal and vertical lines of the cubes I've drawn. But when drawing fast, the lines smoothens out.

The problem seems worse with Wacom Bamboo Paper. So the app you use definitely matters. Some apps are designed to smoothen lines, some don't.

You can take notes with this tablet. It's able to capture my handwriting enough to be legible, but there are some stray strokes.

Another downside to drawing on this tablet is the pen tip feels a bit too slippery. There's also some parallax. The lines will always come out beneath the tip of the pen so that's quite accurate. It's just that when you're drawing from certain angles, the parallax and offset will appear. If you're always drawing while looking straight down on the screen from the front, then parallax and offset is not going to be an issue.

Conclusion

This tablet is probably more suitable for casual drawing purposes. The tablet is actually marketed to beginners and students. For those groups of people, I think this product is good enough, especially if you have a limited budget.

The slow diagonal line jitter issue could be a deal breaker for those who work slower. Other things like parallax, the slippery surface are things that one can get used to. Palm rejection unfortunately doesn't work that well. I'm already used to lifting my palm while drawing so it's not a big issue for me. Because of the way the included case is designed, the case actually covers the bezels and that area is higher compared to the screen, so you can actually rest your palm on it and that helps make it more comfortable for drawing.

An affordable tablet like this will definitely have some limitations. It works but not as well as I expect it to be. At the price it's selling at, and considering that they included a case and a surprisingly well built pen, I can't complain much. Ultimately you have to decide on what to compromise.

Anyway, you can can read more reviews about the Simbans PicassoTab on Amazon and see what others have to say.

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Big thanks to Parblo for sending over this review unit of the Parblo A640 for me to check out. In addition to such graphic tablets, Parblo also make pen displays for artists.

Parblo A640 is a 6 x 4 inch graphics tablet that supports up to 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity. It's priced at just US $29.99 and that's a really attractive price.

That's the packaging.

These are the items included. The manual is included but not shown in the photo above.

There are six replacement nibs and the nib remover.

The braided USB cable has USB C that goes to the tablet and USB A for the computer.

The pen feels solid enough. It's not battery powered so no charging required.

The back has this flat design on one side.

The two side buttons are customisable.

Design of the tablet is simple and nice. The dots on the drawing surface reminds me of those from 2015 Wacom Intuos.

Design of this tablet is symmetrical so if you're left handed you can just out on the side of your drawing hand. There are no driver settings to change for left handed users anyway.

On the back are four rubber feet to prevent slip. There's also a cloth pen holder at the top.

Overall build quality feels solid enough.

6 by 4 inches is considered a small tablet. The drawing area is about the size of my palm.

For drawing tablets, I usually recommend getting at least a medium size tablet, something that's at least 10 by 6 inches. Larger tablets of course are going to be more expensive. This small tablet is just US $29.99 so that's one of the main selling point. The price.

My monitor is 27 inch. When used with my monitor, a tiny movement on the tablet translates to a large movement on the monitor. So it will take some time to get used to the movement. If you're using it on a 13 or 15 inch laptop, the difference between the hand vs cursor movement will be less significant.

Driver

By default, the tablet will be mapped to the full area of a 16:9 aspect ratio monitor.

The pen's pressure sensitivity can be adjusted by the slider. Shortcuts to the two side buttons can be changed here.

This is where you can customise the four physical shortcut buttons.

When you click Reset Customer Defined to choose your own keyboard shortcuts, these are the available shortcuts you can choose from. For some reason, there's no way to input keys from the keyboard. So for example, you won't be able to pick [ and ] to change brush sizes. You have to choose from the earlier menu.

Drawing performance

Photoshop CC (Mac)
Drawing performance is great. Strokes taper nicely, curves are smooth. Lines come out just the way I expect. Performance is predictable and consistent.

Works well with Clip Studio Paint (Mac) too.

With Krita, it's more difficult to control the transition between thin and thick lines. So it's either thin or thick. I don't use Krita very often. I suppose you can tweak the pressure settings of the brushes to get a smoother, more gradual, transition for the thickness.

Conclusion

The A640 performs well as a graphics tablet. For the low price of US $29.99, it's definitely worth the money.

The only thing I do not like is the small size which will take some time to get used to. If you prefer something larger, you can consider the Parblo A609 which supports tilt sensitivity too, or the Parblo A610 with more shortcut buttons.

Availability

The Parblo A640 is available via these links:
Parblo | Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de | Amazon.fr | Amazon.it | Amazon.es | Amazon.co.jp

The 2019 iPad is Apple's 7th generation iPad. It now comes with a 10.2-inch display compared to the 9.7-inch of the iPad 6. And there's 3GB of RAM instead of 2GB. The physical dimensions are slightly bigger and it's also slightly heavier.

The only other major difference is the iPad now supports Smart Keyboard (US $159). The iPad is still kinda thick at 7.5mm.

The weight is 483g. Cellular model is slightly heavier.

The combination of the size and weight makes this tablet very portable. However, it's not that lightweight that you can grip with your thumb. I tried using my thumb to grip the big bezels and gave up after a few seconds.

Holding the iPad with the hand underneath is the better way of holding it if you want to hold for a long period of time. The sketch above was drawn while I was commuting on the public train.

Price for the Wifi models are US $329 (32GB) and $429 (128GB), cellular models are US $459 (32GB) and $559 (128GB). The most expensive Wifi iPad is cheaper than the cheapest iPad Air 3 (64GB). If you're on a budget and want to get a tablet for digital drawing, the new 10.2-inch iPad is worth considering.

The resolution has also increased and is now 2160 x 1620 (264PPI). Visuals look sharp and individual pixels are difficult to discern. Even though there's no P3 wide colour gamut support, the colours still look good.

The glass is very glossy and reflective though. Depending on where you're using the iPad, it may or may not be a problem.

The screen is also quite slippery. While sketching on the train, I could see the Apple Pencil (US $99) gliding around a bit too easily. You can get a matte screen protector to get the textured feeling when drawing, but that's going to affect the colours, sharpness and contrast of the display. Some people like the matte screen protector, some don't. It's a personal preference. If you do want to get a matte screen protector, consider getting the one from SuperShieldz which is cheap and good.

Maximum brightness is 500 nits which makes it bright enough to use outdoors.

This is not a laminated screen so there's a tiny gap between the glass and the actual display. Even though there's a gap, when drawing, that gap is actually not obvious. It's only when you're looking from the side will you see the gap. Parallax is not a problem on a 10.2-inch screen like this.

When tapping on the screen with the Apple Pencil, there's a hollow sound. Tablets with laminated screens will have a dampened sound. This is not something that affects drawing performance of course.

Here's the first sketch I drew on this iPad while I was outdoors. The auto-brightness went to the maximum and the iPad felt slightly warm but still comfortable enough for me to work for long periods.

Battery life is around six hours if you're drawing non-stop at maximum brightness. Battery life is longer if you're just using this indoors at less than maximum brightness.

The iPad takes a long time to charge though.

Speaking of charging, the Apple Pencil, sold separately for another US $99. still charges from the lightning port on the back.

Drawing performance

Drawing performance with the Apple Pencil is fantastic.

Pressure sensitivity and palm rejection works really well. Apple Pencil is the best style for drawing on the iPad. There are third party styluses out that but they don't come close to the accuracy of the Apple Pencil.

There's also tilt sensitivity which can work with pressure at the same time.

Despite the older A10 chip (iPad Air 3 and mini 5 are using A12), drawing experience is still fluid. I was able to use large textured brush without lag.

The only thing that affects drawing experience is the slippery screen which will take time to get used to.

The primary drawing app I'm using is Procreate. When I tried to create a 300DPI A4 canvas, I able to get a maximum of 26 layers. This is surprising because the iPad Air 3 that also has 3GB RAM can only created 19 layers, at least at the time of my review. I no longer have the iPad Air 3 so I can't test it anymore. It's great that the Procreate developers have increase the limit for the layers here.

How much storage to get

How much storage to get depends on what you're going to do, and the apps you use.

The base model of 32GB may be good enough for those who sketch casually.

However, if you're someone who sketches frequently, already sketches frequently, then I suggest getting the 128GB model.

The file size of digital art depends on the complexity, number of layers, and the file format.

Take Procreate for example. Procreate actually records a timelapse video while you're drawing. The video file is larger than the image file. And if you record at higher quality (eg 4K), the file size will be even bigger. In Procreate settings, there's the option to record using HEVC H.265 codec which is quite demanding but even this iPad is still able to record using that without lag so that's great.

Running out of storage space on the iPad can be tricky.

Files are saved inside the apps that create them. So if you run out of storage, you would have to go into the individual apps to export them either to the cloud, or an external storage such as a lightning-USB external drive. You have to do that for individual apps which is tedious and time consuming. There's also the risk of forgetting to transfer certain files.

Compared to iPad Air 3

The reason why the iPad (2019) is so much cheaper than the iPad Air 3 (2019) is because the display is not as good. Don't be mistaken that the 10.2-inch display is a lousy display. It's not. It's a good screen. Colours look good. The screen is even bigger now. I've always though the 9.7-inch was a bit small and could be bigger. At 2160 x 1620 (264PPI) resolution, visuals are sharp.

The main selling point of the iPad Air 3 is the display. More specifically the iPad Air 3 has a laminated display which has no gap between the glass and the display beneath. There's anti-reflective coating which makes reflections more transparent so that you can see the display more easily. The anti-reflective coating also has a bit more friction so Apple Pencil isn't that slippery on the glass. There's P3 wide colour gamut support and True Tone.

The 32GB iPad is US $329 vs the 64GB iPad which is US $499. That's a $170 difference to pay for the better screen. Is it worth it? It really depends on what you value. Or you can spend that $170 towards getting the 128GB iPad and the $99 Apple Pencil, and a case.

If you're using a matte screen protector, the colours, anti-reflective coating aren't going to matter.

Conclusion

The 2019 iPad is a good budget tablet for beginners who want to get started with digital art. It's just a very good tablet overall even if you're not into drawing.

If you're current using iPad 6 and thinking of upgraded to this new iPad, I don't think it's worth the loss you'll make selling and buying a new one just for that extra 0.5-inch display. You might as well wait for Apple to update the iPad with better processors and even more RAM.

Availability

Check out more reviews on Amazon via these affiliate links:
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de | Amazon.fr | Amazon.es | Amazon.it | Amazon.co.jp

Big thanks again to Artisul for sending over a review unit of the new M0610 Pro graphics tablet.

At the time of review, the price is still unknown but I was told there will be a 30% discount off during the launch of the M0610 Pro graphics tablet and the D16 Pro pen display.

Let's see what's included first.

That's the pen, and pen case made of felt.

This battery-free pen is model P58B and supports up to 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity. The whole pen is matte surface except for the silver coloured ring in the middle. Build quality feels solid. Weight is just nice. Not too heavy or light.

The two side buttons have nice feedback when pressed.

That's the nib remover and 10 replacement nibs.

These are the USB-C and micro-USB adapters for working with phones. This tablet also works with Android version 6.0, Windows 7 and MacOS 10.8.5 or newer.

That's the micro-fiber cleaning clothe and artist glove.

This is the USB data cable for connecting the tablet to the computer. On one end is the L-shape USB-C that goes to the tablet. The other end is the USB type A to the computer.

A card with links to where the drivers can be downloaded, warranty info card and quick start guide.

The tablet features a 10 x 6.3 inch drawing surface. The tablet feels a bit plasticky but it's solid. Design looks nice.

Four rubber feet on the back.

There's a total of 8 physical shortcut buttons. That's 4 above and below the control wheel.

RGB lighting seems like the trend now so this tablet has them as well. The LED lights will actually cycle through all the colours of the colour wheel. They look pretty cool but you can turn them off if you want to.

The last button is on the wheel. The wheel is easy to turn with audible feedback while it turns.

Driver

This tablet is compatible with Windows 7, Mac 10.8.5, Android 6.0 or any newer versions of those OS.

I'm using the Windows driver for this review.

Make sure to uninstall other graphic tablet drivers before you install Artisul's driver.

On Windows, the driver is located on the taskbar. Just click on the up arrow near the clock. The tablet needs to be connected or else you will not see the tablet driver icon.

You can customise specific keyboard shortcuts, or choose any pre-defined functions, to any of the physical shortcut buttons. If you're left-handed, you can change the orientation by changing HotKey Align to right.

The two side buttons on the pen can only be configured with mouse clicks. Pressure sensitivity can be adjusted by a slider.

Note that "Support Digital Ink" checkbox. You may need to turn that on or off if the pen/cursor behaves in any unexpected manner. For example, when Digital Ink is selected, the pen is not able to drag and select text.

Drawing performance

All the graphic software tested below are on Windows.

Photoshop CC 2020

Illustrator CC 2020

Medibang Paint Pro

Affinity Photo
This works fine and is responsive.

Clip Studio Paint

Drawing performance is fantastic. The pen is very sensitive and pressure sensitivity works well. There's also quite a nice tactile feedback on the drawing surface.

Lines were able to taper nicely. Curves are smooth. It's easy to maintain consistent pressure and there's no line jitter.

Main issue with Clip Studio Paint is pressure sensitivity did not work by default. The cursor movement was opposite of the pen movement (eg. drawing down will make the cursor go up). The solution is to go into Preferences, turn on WinTab, and choose "use mouse mode in setting of tablet driver". Pen pressure and movement work fine after that.

Glitches

There are some glitches that happen randomly, and can usually be resolved by restarting the computer. So I'm not sure what's wrong. Whether it's the driver or something else.

Anyway, when the glitches happen, drawing software will be less responsive. The software affected are Photoshop, Illustrator and Krita. For some reason, Affinity Photo and Clip Studio Paint will still work well even if the three other softwares are slow and show lag. Sometimes Medibang will start to show jaggy or jitter lines too.

Conclusion

Build quality of the Artisul is M0610 good.

Drawing performance for the most part is good. When it works, it works well. It's just that occasional glitch/issue that results in lag that irritates. Hopefully it's just a driver issue and can be fixed with future driver updates. This tablet is new so it's not unexpected to experience some issues with drivers.

Where to buy

The Artisul M0610 Pro is available from Artisul's website
https://www.artisul.com/PenTablet/M0610-Pro.html

Updated with drawing performance on Mac

The Huion Inspiroy Dial Q620M is a 10.5 by 6.5 inch wireless drawing tablet that features 8 physical shortcut buttons and a control dial. At the time of this review, it's selling at US $109 on Huion's website. It's US $89 on Amazon USA.

These are all the items included in the box.

The USB wireless receiver.

USB type A to USB type C and microUSB adapters. These are so that you can use the tablet with your Android phone.

USB charging cable to charge the tablet. The battery life is said to be 20 hours if you draw non-stop. You can still draw while the tablet charging.

The pen supports 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity. There's no tilt support though. It's not powered by battery so no charging required.

Build quality of the pen is good. It has a nice weight to it, although it's on the lighter side. The rubber grip is comfortable to hold.

The pen stand included can hold the pen horizontally and vertically.

Twist open the pen case and you'll find ten replacement nibs and the nib remover.

The quick start guide and a card with links to where you can download the driver.

Design of the tablet looks beautiful.

The design asethetics is simple and clean. All corners are rounded off. Finishing looks great.

That's the dial at the top left. When turning the dial, audible clicks can be heard as the dial clicks into each step. There's a button in the middle of the dial that lets you switch the functionality (which can be customised). For example, you can switch to using the dial to scroll, zoom, change brush size, undo/redo or whatever you want.

The eight shortcut buttons can also be customised with specific keyboard shortcuts. All the buttons have firm feedback when pressed. There are also lights on the buttons to indicate the battery life. 8 out of 8 lights means the tablet is fully charged.

On the back are parallel lines that run diagonally across the whole surface.

Even the finishing on the back looks good.

In terms of looks and build quality, this tablet definitely gets a 5 out of 5 stars from me. The look and feel is probably why you may want to spend a bit more here. If you have limited budget, there are so many other cheaper Huion tablets you can choose from.

Driver

The driver that I used was the 25 Oct 2019 version. Driver functionality is similar on both Mac and Windows.

Pressure sensitivity can be adjusted with a pressure curve. Default pressure settings work fine. Initial activation force is minimal. As long as the tip is touching the drawing area, it produces a faint line.

The eight physical shortcut buttons and dial can be customised.

You can customised specific keyboard shortcuts to any of the shortcut buttons. If you're using dual monitors, you can set a button to switch display.

These are the default functionality for the dial. You can press the button in the centre of the dial to switch between the three functionality.

By default, the drawing area will be mapped onto the whole desktop. If you're left handed, this is where you can change the orientation of the tablet.

Drawing performance

Overall drawing performance on Windows is very satisfactory. Pressure sensitivity works well. Strokes and curves are smooth. Performance is predictable and consistent.

Affinity Photo (Win)

Adobe Illustrator CC

Krita (Windows) has really lousy refresh rate and the line looks like it comes out bit by bit. It's really a problem with Krita and not the tablet. It's as if it's running at 30Hz on a 60Hz display.

Photoshop (Windows) has some input lag too but not as obvious as Krita. Again, it's a Photoshop and it happens with many tablets that I've tested. Overall I would say it's still usable but it's definitely not as responsive compared to Clip Studio Paint or Medibang Paint Pro.

Clip Studio Paint (Windows)

Medibang Paint Pro (Windows)

Clip Studio Paint (Mac)

Adobe Illustrator (Mac)

Photoshop (Mac)

Medibang Paint Pro (Mac)

Krita (Mac)

User experience with the drawing software on Mac was much better. Even Krita and Photoshop which had lag in Windows are very responsive on the Mac. Everything works well.

In an earlier version of this review, I mentioned the tablet not working with Mac. It didn't work with my Mac Pro 2013 but somehow it worked with my Macbook Pro 2015. Both are running the same Mac OS 10.14.6. My Mac Pro wasn't able to detect the tablet and each time I connected the tablet with cable, the driver would crash. My Macbook Pro did not have this problem.

There's an additional step for the Mac driver to work. You have to go into Mac System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility, make sure the “TabletDriverAgent” and “HuionTablet” are enabled. HuionTablet driver can be found in the Applications folder. TabletDriverAgent should appear automatically when you connect the tablet for the first time to your Mac, but for my Mac Pro it didn't happen.

Drawing on Android

You can use the tablet to draw with your Android device (at least Android version 6). User experience on Android is a hit and miss. You don't have to install any driver and pressure sensitivity works. Drawing performance is actually good if it works. Pressure sensitivity works well with drawing apps that support pressure.

When I connect the tablet with cable to my phone, the horizontal drawing area is mapped to the vertical display of my phone. So that obviously is not going to work right. You have to use the wireless receiver.

Out of the three Android devices that I have, all running Android 9, only one worked with the tablet. I've tried other brands of tablets that work with Android as well and it's always a hit and miss. Sometimes the cursor may not be visible but you can still draw, or sometimes it just doesn't work, which is the situation I faced with two of the three Android devices.

Other more major problem is the random disconnection when in wireless mode. To get the wireless connection working again, I have to connect the cable, and put the wireless receive back. It's very frustration whenever it disconnects.

Video review

You can see the actual drawing performance in action in my video review below.

Conclusion

Drawing performance was quite satisfactory on Windows and almost flawless on Mac. Only issues were with Krita (Win) and Photoshop (Win) with the lag.

I definitely won't recommend getting this tablet just to draw with your Android device. It's risky in the sense that it may not work with your Android device. This tablet performs well strictly with desktop OS.

This is tablet I can recommend easily unless your main software is Krita (Win). The drawing performance is predictable and consistent. Pressure sensitivity works well and the line quality looks good. The tablet also looks great and build quality seems solid.

You can read this other review I found online for another point of view.

Availability

Find the tablet and more reviews on Amazon via these affiliate links:
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de | Amazon.fr | Amazon.es | Amazon.it | Amazon.co.jp

And of course you can get it from Huion's web store as well. Compare prices.

Review unit was provided by Veikk

The Veikk A15 Pro is a 10x6 inch drawing tablet that's almost similar to the previous Veikk A15 except for the extra control wheel. At the time of this review, the Veikk A15 Pro is US $59 on Amazon and the Veikk A15 is US $56. It's definitely worth the extra few dollars to get the control wheel which is actually quite useful.

These are the items in the box:

• Artist glove
• Pen and case
• Pen stand with replacement nibs inside
• A bag of replacement nibs and nib remover
• Card with link to download the driver
• Instruction manual
• USB cable

Veikk is very generous with the number of replacement nibs included.

The pen case is made of some thick rough felt.

The whole pen's made of plastic so it feels hold, but the build quality is solid. It has a matte surface body which has a good gripe. Weight is considered light to medium. It's not powered by battery so no charging required.

This pen supports up to 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity. There's no tilt sensitivity.

The tablet design is similar to the Veikk A15. It's a clean and simple design.

Four rubber feet on the back provides a good grip on the table.

There are 12 physical shortcut buttons that you can customise.

For the A15 Pro, there's the control wheel inside the red ring. There's a smaller button inside the control wheel for changing the wheel's functionality which is customisable.

The tablet is really thin, and overall well built and solid.

If you're a left handed user, the L-shape USB cable will come out from the bottom right.

Driver

Functionality for Windows and Mac drivers is the same. The driver I'm using is 2.0.0.6.

The pressure curve can be adjusted by pulling the point for finer adjustments.

If you're left handed you can change that here. If there are issues with pressure sensitivity, you may need to toggle Windows Ink on or off. E.g. Pressure sensitivity with Photoshop only works with Windows Ink turned on, but pressure for other drawing apps just works regardless.

This is where you can customise the 12 physical shortcut buttons, the control wheel button and the control wheel.

These are the different functionality you can choose for the shortcut buttons. They are quite self explanatory.

Under the Tablet functionality, you can choose these four options:

• Accurate Mode: Allows the cursor to move much slower to give you more precision
• Pen/Erase: Toggle between the pen and eraser in most graphic drawing apps
• Monitor Switch: Allows the mouse cursor to jump from one screen to another screen in dual monitor mode
• Dial Function Switch: No applicable here as there's no dial

At the time of this review, with MacOS driver 2.0.0.6, there's no way to change the pressure sensitivity with the pressure curve. And for some reason, the control wheel button doesn't work. One of the twelve buttons can be assigned for the function switch, but the function switch cannot be assigned to the control wheel.

Windows driver works without glitches.

Drawing performance

Overall drawing performance is good on Windows. Lines are smooth, taper well. There's no jitter with slow lines. Pressure can be maintained consistently when drawing slowly. Lines appear just the way you would expect.

Drawing performance is also good on Mac BUT you can only draw with the default pressure curve sensitivity.

Windows Ink needs to be on for pressure sensitivity to work with Photoshop (Win)

Clip Studio Paint (Win)

Medibang Paint Pro (Win)

Adobe Illustrator (Win)

Krita (Win)

Medibang Paint Pro (Mac)

Because there's no way to adjust the pressure curve with the Mac driver, it may be difficult to get the line transition you want. E.g. It's difficult for me to draw fine lines and transition to much thicker lines. I wasn't able to use the driver to make the lines thin when I apply little or no pressure.

Conclusion

It's a well built drawing tablet that looks good. For US $59, it's quite worth the money for the shortcut buttons, control wheel and drawing performance (on Windows).

You can check out more reviews via these affiliate links:
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I've been testing the Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite for a few days now since the unboxing video and my excitement has tapered off.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite is the budget version of the Galaxy Tab S6 (video review). Official retail price for the wifi-only model is US$349.

My unit was bought in Singapore for S$599 from hachi.tech which is owned by Challenger. The S$499 student price which works out to be around US $351. It sucks that the pricing strategy in Singapore is based on what the market can afford.

My review is from the perspective of an artist so I won't be talking about gaming. To see all the specs, it's all there on gsmarena, and so are the Tab S6 specs.

This review will make constant comparison with the Samsung Tab S6 which was released in August 2019.

The important thing to know is this tablet is powered by Exynos 9611 (Octa-core (4x2.3 GHz Cortex-A73 & 4x1.7 GHz Cortex-A53)) instead of Snapdragon, has 4GB RAM and starts with 64GB storage. There are stereo speakers, 3.5mm headphone jack and a micro SD card slot.

The box comes with an S Pen, USB-C charging cable, wall charger, earbuds and quick start guide.

Earbuds may or may not be included depending on your country.

The included S Pen is not powered by battery so it doesn't require charging. The S Pen could certainly be thicker, like as thick as a typical wooden pencil, but it's not that thin so that's the consolation.

The S Pen supports tilt and pressure sensitivity.

The flat side of the S Pen can attach to the side of the tablet, the side where the buttons are.

As usual, S Pen only has one side button which is still easy to press accidentally. Thankfully, Samsung has finally made it possible to remove the floating pen icon and Air Command that are activated by the side button. The functionality of the side button depends on the drawing app you use and I found that many drawing apps don't use the button or don't allow much customisation for that button.

The nib is medium soft and glides smoothly on the glass. On scale of 1 to 5 in terms of how slippery it is, where 5 is slippery, it's maybe a 4? It will take sometime getting used to the smoothness. You can get a matte screen protector but I'm not sure how that will affect the durability of the pen nib. Besides, a matte screen protector will affect the visual quality of the display which isn't that terrific to begin with. I recommend a flip case instead of a matte screen protector. But do note that the glass display can be scratched. I saw my daughter run her plastic building blocks against the glass of my Tab S6 and a scratch appeared before my eyes. Ouch.

Design looks good with thin bezels. Tab S6 Lite looks quite similar to the Tab S6. Build quality is solid.

The 10.4-inch display is TFT LCD instead of AMOLED. Resolution supported is 2000x1200 which is lower compared to the 2560 x 1600 resolution on the 10.5-inch Tab S6.

The higher resolution is noticeable. Text on webpages are sharper on the Tab S6 while I was noticed slight pixelation on Tab S6 Lite. When watching Youtube videos, Tab S6 was able to play videos at 1440P but the Tab S6 Lite plays at 1080P.

For user interface elements in drawing apps, they are quite similar in size which is to say that they are sized appropriately for fingers to tap on easily.

Tab S6's AMOLED display is noticeable brighter and has more vibrant colours and wider viewing angles. Colours on the Tab S6 Lite does shift slightly when viewed from an angle. So if you want to watch videos on the Tab S6 Lite with someone else, you'll both be affected by the less than ideal viewing angles and colours.

Display is laminated which means there's no gap between the pen tip and LCD beneath. There's no parallax and misalignment.

My unit has slight glow at the edges. Photo above was edited to show the glow more noticeably.

The tablet is 7mm thick compared to the 5.7mm of the Tab S6. Weight is 467g vs 420g. Without comparing to other tablets, it's a good size and weight that makes it very portable.

Aspect ratio is 5:3. When watching 16:9 videos, there will be small black bars at the top and bottom.

My small hand was actually able to grip the tablet vertically.

Overall performance

Overall performance feels more snappy on the Tab S6 vs Tab S6 Lite. It's not that noticeable when drawing. Few areas where performance are...

1. When you change tablet orientation from portrait to landscape, vice versa, there's a noticeable pause before orientation changes. The speed difference how much time you take to say "one thousand" (for Tab S6 Lite) vs "split" (Tab S6).

2. Face recognition is not flawless and not as instant when compared to iOS face recognition. Even when face recognition works, sometimes it takes a second to unlock. It may be better to just use pin/pattern unlock to save time because the alternative is to have face unlock fail and go into pin unlock. There's no fingerprint sensor on the Tab S6 Lite.

3. Webpages load slightly slower than Tab S6. When scrolling, it's not as smooth with very slight choppiness commonly associated with low refresh rate but both tablets actually have 60Hz display.

4. Drawing performance is quite smooth but when there's lots of textures, the performance will start to feel choppy when you pan, zoom or rotate the canvas. Tab S6 still remains responsive despite the texture and complexity of your art.

Drawing performance

Drawing performance is quite smooth generally speaking except when there are lots of textures in your art, in which case the performance will start to feel choppy when navigating around the canvas.

If you draw fast, there's still the usual gap as the line trails behind the pen tip. The gap is there on the iPads as well and if you really want to look for it, it's there on the iPad Pro too. This is input lag. Refresh rate lag is not that noticeable so the lines still look smooth and not choppy when they appear on screen. There's no issue when drawing at normal speed and I was able to always have the lines accurately appear where I want them.

I'm actually quite satisfied with the drawing performance on the Tab S6 Lite. I'm saying that even though my main tablet for digital drawing is actually the iPad Pro.

My main gripe with drawing on Android comes down to the quality of drawing apps available from the Google Play Store. The thing is, there are actually some pretty good drawing apps out there.

My favourite drawing apps on Android currently is Infinite Painter and Concepts. Infinite Painter is a good alternative to Procreate on iOS even though it doesn't has as many features. Concepts is just a very beautifully designed drawing app on Android, iOS and Microsoft.

There are people who just don't like iPad because of iOS, Apple or whatever reasons. Right now, I can say confidently that you won't be missing out if you get an Android tablet for drawing.

When it comes to taking notes, there are plenty of quality note taking and handwriting apps from the Google Play Store.

Other quirks

The default Samsung virtual keyboard layout isn't that good. There's definitely a learning curve to it. You can install SwiftKey or Google Keyboard (I'm using that).

Often times when the virtual keyboard appears, especially in landscape mode, the keyboard may cover important buttons, eg. Send. This is due to the wider aspect ratio of 5:3 compared to 4:3 (on iPads). One way to solve this will be to turn the tablet vertically which will take a second (lag), and turn it back – feels dumb.

The other way is to resize the keyboard which is possible with Google Keyboard.

Also, the random zoom-to-a-different-place problem is still there with Medibang Paint.

Palm rejection works fine for the most part but occasionally there are still some stray strokes. It's not problematic to the point where I want to tear my hair out yet, thankfully.

Oh, there's no Samsung Dex desktop mode.

Should you get the iPad 7 (2019) instead?

Main selling point of iPad for artists is Apple Pencil experience is fantastic, and is definitely better than the S Pen. Other advantages include the OS and the ecosystem. There are plenty of quality drawing apps on iOS/iPadOS. Overall performance is also smoother even though they are still using the A-something chip from years ago.

However, Apple products are more expensive.

At the time of this review, the base model iPad 7 with 32GB storage and 3GB ram cost US $329 (US$279 on Amazon) and that does not include the US $99 Apple Pencil. 32GB storage is a bit low though and can fill up fast. So ideally, it's better to get the 128GB iPad but that's US $429. Amazon occasionally sells those iPads at US $100 off though. So the maximum you may spend during a discount is US $429 for the 128GB iPad with Apple Pencil.

iPad display is not laminated but it has better colours and the aspect ratio is more suited for productivity work. Samsung Tab S6 Lite display is laminated but colours aren't as good, but not too bad. Tab S6 Lite also has better speakers.

The maximum you may spend for the Tab S6 Lite is just US $349.

One thing I don't like about Apple is their file system which is not intuitive at all. Here's a recent problem I had on the iPad. There's a video file with mov file format inside the Files App. I wasn't able to play that video from the Files app, nor can I open the video with a video app because I can't move that video to the video app (on Android you just use the video app to open the file). I wasn't able to move that video file to the photos gallery app which I think may play the video too. There's also no way to always see file extension. And to open files, you always have to move the files inside the apps to open. You can't use apps to open the files because apps don't have access to the iOS file system. I can go on and on. Oh, file transfer via the Files app either online or through cable is so slow.

Conclusion

The Samsung Tab S6 Lite is a tablet with compromises.

The biggest compromise is the use of the Exynos 9611 which makes the tablet less responsive that what it could be (Tab S6). Thankfully, drawing performance for the most part is still considered smooth. Unfortunately I no longer have the Tab S4 so I can't tell you if it's better to get the older tablet if you have limited budget. You can go compare benchmarks, or check out my Tab S4 video review. Not sure if I can recommend older Android tablets as well because I'm not sure what updates they are still getting.

Good things I like about the tablet are... It looks good. Build quality is solid. Other than the processor, 4GB RAM, 64GB storage with micro SD card slots are reasonable base model specs.

Display is alright. Colours could be more vibrant or brightness could be higher. But the quality is still reasonable at this price point although I have to say that the iPad 7 does have better display.

As mentioned earlier, there are good drawing apps on Android so you won't be missing out if you choose Android over Apple.

My recommendation is that Tab S6 Lite is an okay buy if you want to go the Android route. There aren't many Android tablets that support pressure sensitive styluses for drawing so the Tab S6 Lite will still be on my recommended list. There's the Huawei MediaPad M5 Pro and M5 Lite but those are from 2018.

If you have the budget, I do recommend the Samsung Tab S6 though but that's significantly more expensive with a retail price of US $649.

Pros and cons at a glance
Pros
+ Beautiful design
+ Solid build quality
+ Lightweight at 467g
+ 2000 x 1200 resolution reasonable for display this size
+ Android 10
+ S Pen included
+ S Pen support tilt and pressure sensitivity
+ S Pen is not powered by battery
+ S Pen is accurate
+ S Pen replacement nibs are cheap
+ Palm rejection works great most times
+ No jitter when drawing diagonal lines slowly
+ Audio quality from stereo speakers quite good
+ MicroSD card slot included
+ 3.5mm audio jack included
+ Good battery life
+ Lots of decent drawing apps on Android

Cons
- Colours on the TFT LCD could be better
- Viewing angles for the display could be better
- S Pen could be thicker
- No Samsung Dex
- One second lag when changing tablet orientation
- Face unlock not as effective compared to fingerprint sensor
- Could lag when dealing with complex graphics and lots of textures
- Loading of webpages could be faster
- Scrolling webpages has this stuttering look as if the refresh rate is low (display is 60Hz)
- Earbuds not included in some countries
- Camera quality is so-so

This review unit is sponsored by Parblo.

The Parblo A610 Pro is a 10 x 6.25 inch graphics drawing tablet from Parblo, a company that makes graphic tablets and pen displays.

Main selling features here are the 8 physical shortcut buttons, scroll wheel, 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity and the ability to work with Android devices.

At the time of this review, official retail price is US $79.99. You can get it from Parblo online store as well as on Amazon.

These are all things included in the box:

• USB type A cable
• Quick start guide
• Cleaning cloth
• Pen
• Pen stand with 8 replacement nibs
• USB-A to USB-C adapter
• USB-A to microUSB adapter
• Artist glove

The data cable has USB-A on one side, and USB-C on the other.

These are the USB adapters for microUSB and USB-C that are used by Android phones.

Build quality for the pen and stand is solid and has a good weight to it. The pen stand allows the pen to rest vertically or horizontal.

The pen has a huge matte hard surface rubber grip that's comfortable to hold. It's not powered by battery so no charging required.

There are two side buttons on the pen that are customisable to different shortcuts using the driver. Button clicks are firm.

The pen supports up to 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity but there's no tilt sensitivity.

The 8 replacement nibs are hidden inside the pen stand.

The nib remover is beneath the pen stand.

The 10 x 6.25 inch active area is a good size to work with when drawing. That's the size I usually recommend regardless of the monitor size you pair with.

Aspect ratio is actually 16:10 instead of the more common monitor 16:9. You can choose to map the active area to your monitor aspect ratio. 16:10 doesn't differ too much from 16:9 so the extra skew is not that noticeable.

On the back are four rubber feet that are effective at preventing slipping.

There are eight physical shortcut buttons, aka Express Keys, which are customisable to specific keyboard shortcuts or pre-defined functions. The buttons are firm and have audible clicks and feedback.

The scroll wheel comes with a button in the centre that allows the functionality of the scroll to be changed. I typically have the scroll wheel change brush size. More functions can be additionally assigned to the wheel.

The tablet is thin and overall design looks clean and sleek. The matte drawing surface feels nice.

Driver

No driver disc is included so you've to download it from Parblo's website.

The Mac driver I'm using here is version 2.1.5. The driver works perfectly. The only issue is driver installation on MacOS may not be straightforward if you're using MacOS Mojave 10.14 or newer.

With MacOS 10.14 or newer, you may see this dialog box. Basically, besides installing the driver, you also need to give permissions to the driver so that it can work. Otherwise you can see the cursor, but the cursor won't move.

Driver installation on Windows is straightfoward.

Functionality of the Mac and Windows drivers is similar, except on Windows there's this extra Windows INK feature which you may have to turn on or off if your pen pressure is not working right.

Here's where you can customise the pen's side buttons to various mouse clicks or keyboard shortcuts. Pressure curve can be manual adjusted by moving the curve. If you're left-handed user, you can change the orientation of the tablet here.

The active area aspect ratio is 16:10. If you want to match it to your 16:9 monitor, you can do so here.

Here's where you can customise the Express Keys.

These are the pre-defined functions for the Express Keys. To use a specific keyboard shortcut, just click "Reset Customer Defined".

You can assign the buttons to launch applications, keyboard shortcuts, open webpages and mouse clicks. To assign keyboard shortcuts, you just enter the keys you want, and save.

These are additional pre-defined functions you can choose for the Express Keys. Many of those functions are specific to Photoshop functions and tools. If you use dual displays, you'll definitely need Display Switch.

Drawing performance on Mac and Windows

Overall drawing performance is fantastic. I did not notice any issues.

Pressure sensitivity works well. Pen is accurate. Lines taper and turn smoothly, and transition from various thickness is smooth. Maintaining consistent pressure is also easy so there's no line thickness wobble. In short, the lines come out just the way I expect them to. Performance is consistent and predictable.

There's no tilt sensitivity though.

Photoshop CC 2019 (Mac)

Illustrator CC 2020 (Mac)

Medibang Paint Pro (Mac)

Clip Studio Paint (Mac)

Affinity Photo (Mac)

Krita (Mac)

Drawing performance on Android

No driver is needed for the tablet to work with Android devices. However, not all Android devices may show the cursor. I've tried the tablet on my XiaoMi Mi Max 2 phone and Samsung Tab S6 tablet and both showed cursors.

When used with Android devices, it's best that both the device and the tablet are in portrait format.

To work in landscape orientation, you have to lock the orientation before you rotate the Android device. Then rotate the tablet to horizontal position to match. The icons on the Android device will not be rotated and will point to the side, but the cursor will go exactly where the pen goes on the tablet.

If you don't lock the orientation before you rotate the Android device to landscape, the icons will rotate properly, but the orientation within the tablet will also rotate. This means for the cursor to track in the correct direction, the Android device is horizontal, but the tablet has to be vertical, and part of the active area is cropped off too.

This is confusing yes, so it's best to use the tablet with Android devices in both in portrait orientation.

The other downside is pressure sensitivity does not work well. For the Android devices I used, there's a tendency to draw thick lines. Thin lines are extremely difficult to draw. Even if you apply light pressure, lines will be thick. You have to apply the lightest of the lightest pressure to get thin lines. It's not easy.

While you can use the tablet to draw on Android devices, just know that pressure sensitivity does not work well.

Conclusion

Overall, it's a well built and nice looking tablet that has fantastic drawing performance on Windows and Mac. I won't recommend this for drawing on Android unless you don't mind the lack of pressure sensitivity, and there's the orientation issue.

Where to buy

Parblo online store | Amazon

Check out more reviews on Amazon

Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 was released in August 2019 and is still to date probably the best Android tablet in the market.

I actually bought the Tab S6 to replace the Tab S4 that I was using previously. Drawing performance for Tab S4 was quite good and is similar on the Tab S6 despite the better specfications.

The model that I bought is the wifi model with 6GB RAM, 128GB storage. it's also available with LTE, 6GB RAM and 256GB storage.

There's a micro SD card slot for expandable storage. Unfortunately, there no headphone jack, and the under-screen fingerprint sensor and face unlock don't work flawlessly.

The design looks good with thin profile and bezels. It's relatively lightweight at just 420g without any case. It's a tablet you can hold with one hand, draw with the other without feeling tired.

Thickness is 5.7mm.

The chip on Tab S6 is Snapdragon 855 which has pretty good performance. I've not noticed lag when drawing, playing videos or browsing the web with multiple browser tabs opened.

Battery capacity is 7040mAh which can last for 6-8 hours depending on your usage and the display brightness.

The 10.5-inch OLED display supports a resolution of 2560 x 1600. The resolution supports 1440P Youtube videos, something even the 12.9-inch iPad Pro (2732 x 2048 pixels) can't do because of lack of support within the video playing apps.

Colours on the display are vibrant. Contrast levels are fantastic.

The display is also laminated which means there's no gap between the drawing surface and the OLED beneath. When drawing, it will seem like the lines are appearing directly beneath the pen.

There's still slight input lag. Basically, there's still a gap as the line tries to catch up with the cursor while drawing. It's not a big deal. Even the iPad Pro has input lag if you look for it. Note that input lag is different from normal lag which there is none. Overall tablet performance is snappy.

Official retail price for the Samsung Tab S6 base model is US $649 or around 600 Euro. I bought mine here in Singapore at S$998.

The S Pen is included. This is an active stylus that supports pressure and tilt sensitivity.

The S Pen does not require battery power to write or draw with. However, this particular S Pen does have a small battery in it for additional wireless features which do not work well so I won't mention them.

Behind the Tab S6 there is a small concave slot that the S Pen can attach magnetically to, and for charging.

Two replacement tips are provided, a black one with more friction and a white hard tip that's smooth. The black tip feels like a felt-tip and provides more control when drawing on glass since it has that extra bit of friction. The white hard tip is smooth and is good for drawing.

Unlike the Apple Pencil which has a hard tip, the S Pen tip is software by comparison and the tapping sound is less audible.

The black soft-medium tip can wear down fast if you draw regularly but replacement tips are inexpensive and easy to find. You can find them on Amazon. Last time I check you can get five tips for less than US $10.

Android drawing apps are getting better each year.

Some drawing apps I recommend at Infinite Painter, Ibis Paint, Sketchbook, Artflow, Medibang and Concepts.

My favourite drawing app on Android currently is Concepts. It's a beautifully designed vector drawing app that even has textures you can choose to apply onto strokes. Concepts is available on iPad, Android and Windows. Downside is the Android version does not support all the features and functionality of the iPad version, but it still has all the core drawing features, and the same files can be worked on with Windows (the iPad files can't work on other devices at time of this review.)

A few years ago, I may say drawing apps on iPad have better quality. Procreate is fantastic on iPad and the Android equivalent Infinite Painter isn't as fully featured. However, there are still many good drawing apps on Android and I don't think you'll miss out if you choose Android over iPad. And there are pros and cons to Android and iPadOS, so I can only say they are different but not which is better.

The overall Tab S6 drawing performance definitely meets my expectations. This is the best Android tablet for creating digital art. The price is high but for the specifications and quality of display, it's still kinda worth the money. If you have lower budget you can consider the Samsung Tab S6 Lite which still supports the S Pen.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Beautiful design
+ Thin and lightweight (420g)
+ Solid build quality
+ High resolution OLED display with vibrant colours
+ Good battery life but could be better
+ 4-way speakers with good audio quality
+ S Pen included
+ S Pen support tilt and pressure sensitivity
+ S Pen is not powered by battery
+ S Pen is accurate
+ S Pen replacement nibs are cheap
+ Palm rejection works well
+ Snappy performance
+ Good drawing performance
+ No jitter when drawing diagonal lines slowly
+ Micro SD card slot
+ Base model with 6GB RAM, 128GB storage
+ Android 10
+ Samsung DeX available
- No headphone jack
- Face unlock and under-screen fingerprint sensor not flawless
- Pricey
- Earbuds not included in some countries
- Camera quality is so-so

Availability

You can check out more reviews and current prices on Amazon via these affiliate links:
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This is the Huawei MatePad Pro, the top of the line tablet that competes with the Apple iPad Air 3 and Samsung Tab S6.

My review is from the perspective of an artist.

Here are the key specifications

• Display type: LCD
• Size: 10.8-inches
• Resolution: 2560 x 1600
• Colour support: 16.7 million colours, DCI-P3 wide colour gamut
• Chip: Kirin 990 - Octa-core (2x2.86 GHz Cortex-A76 & 2x2.09 GHz Cortex-A76 & 4x1.86 GHz Cortex-A55)
• RAM: 8GB
• Storage: 256GB
• External storage: NM memory card
• OS: EMUI 10.1 (based Android 10)
• Connection: USB-C
• Battery: 7250 mAh
• Weight: 492g

Visit Huawei's page for full specifications.

I bought this in Singapore for S$898 and it came bundled with the Huawei M-Pencil and magnetic keyboard case.

Huawei products are difficult to find in USA and Amazon does not sell them. Price is around US $510 on Aliexpress. Just for comparison purposes, Samsung Tab S6 is US $649, iPad Air 3 64GB is US $499, and iPad Pro 11-inch 128GB is US $799.

Design and hardware

This is a beautiful 10.8-inch LCD tablet with thin bezels and solid build quality.

Even though this is not an AMOLED display, the colours are still vibrant and look great. Colours here are noticeably better compared to the LCD display on the Samsung Tab S6 Lite, and almost comparable to the Samsung Tab S6.

Brightness can reach up to 500 nits and it's definitely good enough for use outdoors.

The resolution is 2560 x 1600 pixels, 16:10 ratio, ~280 ppi density. That's a good resolution for a 10.8-inch size that makes everything looks sharp. Pixelation is not noticeable.

Visual quality of the display is impressive and very satisfactory.

While this is a laminated display, there is still a tiny gap between the glass and LCD beneath. I'm not sure if that gap is due to the thickness of the glass or something else.

When you press hard on the display with the pen tip, there's some ripple effect. It's not visible in the photo above as it's difficult for my camera to capture. The colour effect you see in the photo above is due to glass refraction at an angle.

I consider myself to write or draw with light or medium pressure and while drawing normally, I'm able to see the ripple effect.

The tablet has rounded corners and sides are curved out. Bezels are even thinner than the iPad Pro. You have to make a conscious effort to hold it in such a way that your fingers don't touch the screen. It's quick to get used to.

The camera bump for the 13MP f/1.8 camera is huge. The nice matte textured back can also be used for charging a phone wirelessly with 7.5W power delivery.

The selfie camera cutout is located at the top right when the tablet is held vertical.

Not all user interface elements will move out of the space taken by the camera cutout. However you can rotate the tablet so that the camera is at the bottom and out of the way. By the way, touch still works even with the camera there.

The Huawei MatePad Pro is powered by the Kirin 990 chip which is almost as fast as the Snapdragon 855 found in the Samsung Tab S6. The unit I have comes with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage.

Overall performance is snappy. Operation and animation feels smooth.

Expandable storage is with NM memory card which is the exact size of a nano SIM card. Huawei claims the new card is 45% smaller than microSD but I just don't see it.

Having their own proprietary memory card means you won't be able to use your existing microSD card. And in the future if you want to get a tablet from another brand, you won't be able to reuse the NM card unless it's another Huawei product.

The proprietary expandable storage a minor issue though because the tablet comes with 256GB storage which is more than enough for general usage and lots of drawing.

The Huawei M-Pencil is not included and is sold separately. Price is around US $75. In Singapore, official retail price S$148 which is significantly more expensive than what I can find online from overseas seller.

M-Pencil supports tilt sensitivity and up to 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity.

The M-Pencil may look like the Apple Pencil but it's not an exact copy.

The body is gray with a semi-gloss surface. It weighs 14g, noticeably lighter compared to 20g Apple Pencil. Build quality is good but it doesn't not feel as solid or dense compared to the Apple Pencil due to the material and lighter weight. Anyway, some prefer heavier stylus, some prefer lighter.

M-Pencil is hexagonal in design with the edges smoothed out. One of the sides is concave and that snaps magnetically to the side of the tablet for charging. Battery life is rated to be 10 hours.

When you snap the M-Pencil to the side of the tablet, pairing process will start. This is a Bluetooth stylus and will require Bluetooth. It's also an active stylus in the sense that with some apps, you can hover the pen tip and there may be some interaction. But there's no visible cursor.

The pen tip is made of plastic and has the typical smoothness of plastic on glass. Thankfully this is not as slippery compared to the Huawei MediaPad M5 which is extremely slippery, like ice-skating rink type of slippery.

Replacement tips can be found on AliExpress and at the time of this review, it around US $10 for one. That's twice as expensive compared to Apple Pencil tips.

The tip is not completely firm when installed. There seems to be some spring like mechanism holding the pen tip. The pen tip doesn't exactly retract or move when writing or drawing, but you can definitely feel a tiny bit of movement.

Well, at least this is not US $99 or $129 like the Apple Pencil 1st and 2nd gen.

Drawing performance

The drawing apps that I've tested are Ibis Paint, Medibang Paint Pro and Concepts.

Concepts is currently my favourite drawing app on Android. So when I saw that it's available on in the Huawei AppGallery, I was ecstatic. It's the same Android version that I have on the Samsung tablet.

This is Ibis Paint. Pressure sensitivity works fine.

If you have paid for unlocked version of Ibis Paint, well, you won't be able to restore the purchase here because there's no Google Play Services to link to the version you paid elsewhere.

And even if you want to pay to unlock Ibis Paint here, you can't because it seems the developers did a 100% port without making it possible for transaction through Huawei's payment service.

This version of Medibang Paint Pro is ad-supported, thankfully only on the homepage. I was able to sign in to my Medibang account and all the cloud saves managed to sync. In short, I have all the files I have created on other devices that run Medibang.

Here's a sketch I drew in Concepts. Pressure and tilt works fine.

Drawing experience is good except for the occasional glitches. There are a few of times where I would use double finger tap to undo and it doesn't work. It works most of the time but sometimes it doesn't. Also when I'm tapping to switch to Color Picker, sometimes it's like either the tablet or the app doesn't register my finger tap. These are small issues though.

I wasn't able to restore the brush and tool purchases that I bought on my Samsung tablet though. That's the issue you have to deal with when there's no Google Play Services. It means you may have to spend money again to buy the same things that you've already bought elsewhere.

Having said that, Wacom Bamboo Paper was actually able to recognise my past purchases. My guess would be Wacom Bamboo Paper actually doesn't use Google Play Services to authenticate past purchases.

Palm rejection works quite well. Stray strokes are rare. Shown above is Wacom Bamboo Paper.

Certain apps have strict palm rejection and only detect pen input. Some examples are the default NotePad app on Huawei, Nebo (note taking), Medibang Paint Pro, Concepts.

Palm rejection still works quite well even for apps that don't have strict palm rejection, e.g. Wacom Bamboo Paper.

When drawing diagonal lines slowly, there is some wobble. Shown above are lines drawn on Wacom Bamboo Paper.

Strange thing is when you hold the M-Pencil vertically (B), there's no wobble. But no one holds their pen like that except for Chinese brush painters.

How much wobble there is will also depend on the app you use, and how slow you draw.

With Concepts app, I did not notice the wobble while drawing. You can click the image above for a larger view.

Here's another Concepts sketch.

Lack of Google Play Store

The most important thing you need to know is the OS used on the Huawei MatePad Pro is the Huawei EMUI 10.1 which is based off Android 10. There is no Google Play Store, so the variety of apps will be limited as the Huawei app store aka Huawei AppGallery is still relatively new. And There's also no Google Play Services which means some of the apps ported over from Android may not work well, especially those that require Google services, e.g. Google cloud syncing, Google account sign in within apps, restoring past purchases paid through Google Play Store.

Using this tablet feels like using a tablet back when the Google Play Store was in its infancy when quality apps were limited.

My recommendation when it comes to buying tablets and computers is to buy for the software you are using. In this case, you should not buy for features that Huawei has promised they will be adding because who knows when that will be. Remember the Windows Phone and their app store?

I'm optimistic that the Huawei AppGallery will be populated with more quality apps in the future because the Chinese market is huge. There is demand for Chinese apps but I'm not sure about demand for English apps. It's difficult to say if developers will create English apps or port current Android ones over.

Despite the lack of Google Play Store, the Huawei AppGallery does have many apps. When it comes to quality drawing apps, there aren't many. The ones that I'm using in this review are Medibang Paint Pro, Ibis Paint and Concepts. Some of the popular Android drawing apps that are missing are ArtFlow, Autodesk Sketchbook, Infinite Painter, Adobe Illustrator Draw, Adobe Photoshop Sketch.

Other issues

Here are some other non-art related issues I noticed.

Microsoft Swiftkey keyboard doesn't work. I can type on the keyboard but letters won't appear. What I'm trying to say here is with Android apps ported over to Huawei's EMUI Android, sometimes there will be glitches.

All the Google apps are not available. E.g. Gmail, Drive, Maps, Keep. This means you'll need to access the web versions of all those apps. You can easily create bookmarks for all the webpages on the home page.

Facebook, Instagram, Youtube apps are also not available. Web versions do not have the same functionality of apps. For example, with web version of Instagram, you're not allowed to upload photos.

Technically speaking you can install Google Play Store and Google Play Services but it can be very challenging. I tried to do that for a few hours and wasn't successful. And even when I did install Google Play Services, it caused some of the apps I already have to not work properly.

If you do want Google Play Store, buy from resellers on AliExpress that have pre-installed it on the tablet. That's the easily way and the tablet is not any more expensive compared to one without.

Conclusion

The Huawei MatePad Pro has terrific design, build quality, display, specifications and performance.

The drawing experience with M-Pencil is good but I can only say that when used with Concepts. Pressure and tilt sensitivity works. And palm rejection works well too.

The only major downside is the lack of the Google Play Store and Google Play Services. That really limits the variety of apps available. It will take time for quality of apps in the Huawei AppGallery to reach the standard of those in the Google Play Store or even the Apple App Store.

If you are switching from another Android tablet, note that you may not be able to restore your past purchases. The most important thing you should check is whether the drawing app you want to use is available in the Huawei AppGallery.

Having said that, there are resellers on AliExpress that sells the Huawei tablet pre-installed with Google Play Services, and the prices are not too different from tablets that do not come with the Google Play Store. So if you're thinking of getting the Huawei MatePad Pro, I definitely recommend getting one that's already pre-loaded with the Google Play Store.

When you consider the price of US $510 and the $75 Huawei M-Pencil the total is not too far from the Samsung Tab S6 which comes with the S Pen and official Google Play Store. If you want to save some money, you can go with the Huawei. If you want the AMOLED display, then the Samsung.

My final recommendation is this: Buy for the software you want to use.

Big thanks to Microsoft Singapore for providing the review unit.

The Microsoft Surface Go 2 is a significant upgrade to the first Surface Go which was released in August 2018. Almost everything about the tablet has improved, namely display, performance, drawing experience and battery life.

In this review, we will see if it can be used for digital illustration, and whether it can be used as a digital sketchpad.

The only accessory included in the box is the charger. The Surface Pen (US $99) and Surface Go Type Cover (US $129).

The Surface Pen is an essential buy if you want to draw. There are many Surface Pen alternatives out there but the one from Microsoft performs, not surprisingly, the best.

My unit is the LTE model that comes with Intel Core m3-8100Y (dual 1.1Ghz), 8GB RAM and 128GB NVMe SSD storage.

I don't recommend the base models with Intel Pentium Gold 4425Y, 4GB or eMMC storage.

Intel Core m3-8100Y is better because it can boost to three times its speed. 4GB RAM is definitely not enough. With just a web browser and a few tabs opened, it's already using more than 4GB of RAM. eMMC storage speed is as fast/slow as 7200RPM spinning hard drives from decades ago.

The base model comes in at US $400. In Singapore that's S$648.

The model that I recommend with Intel Core m3, 4GB RAM, 128GB storage, Wifi cost US $630 (S$868). That's not including the US $99 Surface Pen yet. If this is too pricey, then I recommend getting the the iPad 7 or Samsung Tab S6 Lite instead.

The higher spec model competes with the iPad Air 3 (S$749 for 64GB model).

The display has increased from 10 to 10.5-inches. Resolution is 1920 x 1280 with a 3:2 aspect ratio.

This display can now play 1080P videos. The previous model was limited by its 1800 x 1200 resolution which can only play upsized 1280 x 720 videos. The extra sharpness and details i noticeable when playing videos.

Overall display sharpness is quite similar to previous model since the pixel density is rather similar. There's noticeable pixelation but not a big issue.

The 1920 x 1280 resolution is very usable.

Colours good good out of the box. I measured 100% sRGB, 77% AdobeRGB, 71% NTSC, 77% P3, and an impressive maximum brightness of 360 nits. Even with the display at 50% brightness, the tablet was still bright enough for indoor use. Maximum brightness is definitely enough for outdoor use, even under sunlight.

Display is very reflective, but the brightness is enough to shine through slight reflections.

This is a laminated display so there's no gap between the glass surface and LCD beneath. When writing or drawing, the lines will look like they appear directly beneath the pen tip.

The LTE model weighs 553g and the Wifi model is 10g lighter. The tablet is as thick as the Surface Pen. Overall, it's a very compact tablet that's easy to bring around.

The stand is built in.

That's the lowest angle.

There's no lock for the stand so when drawing, you'll press against the screen and the tablet will go to the lowest position, which is not the best angle to draw with unless you want to be a hunchback.

I recommend getting a laptop stand to prop up the tablet. You can find cheap functional laptop stands from US $20.

Surface Pen can snap magnetically to the left side of the tablet.

Ports at the top are power and volume.

LTE sim card slot is on the left.

There's Wifi 6. I was able to download 1GB in under 1min 30s. But download speeds really depend on your network.

On the right are the 3.5mm audio jack, Surface port for charging, and USB-C.

The USB-C can output video and audio.

You can charge the tablet via the USB-C port with a charger that provides enough power.

At the bottom are the connectors for the Surface Go Type Cover.

Hidden behind the stand is a microSD card slot. This should be included in all Surface devices since it increase the appeal for the products.

The actual usable storage for the 128GB model is actually 118GB and 12GB is taken up by Windows OS so you're effectively left with just 106GB storage. Nowadays, you can get up to 1TB storage sizes with microSD cards. Get Sandisk.

These are the three colours available for the Surface Go Type Cover.

The red and gray have palm rests and cover made with Alcantara which is a material with cloth-like texture. The black has some rubberised surface for the palm rest and Alcantara for the cover. I've read reports that Alcantara can stain with usage. So if you want something easier to clean, perhaps go with the black option.

The Type Cover snaps onto the tablet with strong magnets. Typing experience is good. Keys have good travel and feedback. Trackpad is a good size with firm click.

There's backlight so you can use this even in the dark.

The keyboard is smaller than a standard size keyboard so it will take some time to get used to it. I keep hitting the wrong keys because my muscle memory is for standard keyboard sizes.

Note that there's no Control button on the right side, so keyboard shortcuts on the right side will be difficult or impossible to reach with just your right hand.

I still prefer my Logitech wireless keyboard though because of the size and right-side Control key.

Also when drawing, I can place the Logitech keyboard on the side which is more comfortable for me when using keyboard shortcuts.

It's good to have an external keyboard because the virtual keyboard is small, and takes up a huge portion of the display.

The NVMe SSD is faster than the eMMC storage but it's not as fast compared to SSD on other Surface devices. Booting the system, launching apps and opening large files will take some time. But after launch, the performance is smooth, mostly, with occasional lag when you start to push the system.

Surface Go 2 comes with Windows 10 S which is a stripped down version of Windows that can only install apps from the Microsoft App Store. When you try to install incompatible desktop apps, eg Photoshop, it will ask if you want to switch to Windows 10. I recommend switching over to Windows 10 so that you won't be limited by the variety of apps from the app store.

You can certainly do graphic design with Photoshop but it just does feel nice working on such a small display.

Photo editing is possible too since the display has good colour accuracy. As mentioned the storage speed isn't that fast so it takes time for Lightroom to load previews.

I exported 100 24MP RAW files and it took 5min 22s which is maybe 25% more time taken by the Surface Book 3. I can definitely with 6 minutes to export 100 RAWs.

I probably won't want to edit any videos on this tablet but 1080P videos should be fine, if you have time to wait for the export.

Drawing performance

Drawing performance has improved.

With the slow diagonal line jitter test, I was actually able to get straight lines. The earlier model has problems with wobble and jitter so this is an excellent improvement. For some reason, this line quality is even better than the Surface Book 3 which has wobble/jitter.

Photoshop performed alright but could be better.

Initial activation force of the Surface Pen is higher than tablets made by Wacom, XP-Pen, Huion. This makes it difficult to produce thin lines when you choose a big brush.

In the drawing above, you can see that the lines are mostly medium and thick. It's difficult to produce thin lines with light pressure. Just press a bit harder and you'll get obviously thicker lines.

For the uncoloured line art sketches, you can see a rather random mix of line thickness. I was actually trying to draw with consistent pressure, basically trying to get lines of consistent thickness. But when I press too hard, it's becomes thicker, and too light, the lines become too thin. The transition between thin and thick is too abrupt, not smooth as all.

Lines also don't taper that nicely with Photoshop.

Medibang Paint Pro performed rather similarly to Photoshop. It's difficult to achieve the smooth transition from thin to thick while drawing, and lines don't taper nicely.

Performance with Clip Studio Paint is slightly better, but you can see the line tapers are still not as smooth.

This is Krita. Tilt sensitivity works.

There were some issues with finger gestures. I wasn't able to undo with double finger tap. And there are misses whenever I use certain finger gesture shortcuts.

The only app that worked perfectly is Sketchable. Pressure and tilt sensitivity works predictable. Finger gestures work great.

So drawing performance really depends on the app you use.

Conclusion

The Microsoft Surface Go 2 may have many improvements over the previous model. It's a much better tablet now – I'm referring to the model with Intel Core m3 and 8GB RAM.

It has a better display with good colours and brightness, the resolution is higher, performance is better and 8hr+ battery life is good.

If you're looking for a tablet for general usage, this is a good one to consider. If you need more power, consider the Surface Pro 7.

When it comes to drawing, the performance could certainly be better. I don't think it's the fault of the tablet. Maybe the Microsoft Surface Pen is just not good enough. Microsoft needs to lower the initial activation force, and get the pen to be more sensitive so that you can get smooth thin to thick transition, so that smooth line taper is actually possible.

Compared to the iPad Air 3, Samsung Tab S6 or Samsung Tab S6 Lite
The main selling point here is the Windows 10 which has the familiar file system, and you get to use all desktop software.

My advice has always been to buy based on the apps you want to use. If you don't have any specific apps in mind, they you can probably go with iPad or the Samsung.

Where to buy

The Microsoft Surface Go 2 is available from Microsoft Singapore online store.

Check out more reviews on Amazon via these direct affiliate links:
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de | Amazon.fr | Amazon.it | Amazon.es | Amazon.co.jp

The Samsung Tab A series of tablets has always been confusing to me.

The most important thing to know is there are two versions of Tab A. One's the standard Tab A and the other is the Tab A with S Pen. The tablets may share the same name but they have different specifications and features. More specifically, the Tab A that doesn't come with the S Pen does not support the S Pen.

Second thing to know is the Tab A with S Pen, the model that I'm reviewing, is the one with better specifications all around except for the small battery capacity of 4200mAh vs 5100 mAH of the Tab A non-S Pen model.

Third thing to know is the Tab A with S Pen has a much better display with higher resolution, better colours and viewing angles.

To compare the full specifications, just visit gsmarena: Tab A 8.0 (2019) | Tab A 8.0 with S Pen (2019)

This is the Samsung Tab A 8.0 with S Pen (2019). It's the most affordable tablet from Samsung that supports the S Pen.

I bought mine from Amazon US for less than US $240. Just for comparison purposes, the Tab S6 Lite is US $349, iPad 10.2 with 32GB is US $329 and iPad Mini 5 is US $399 and Apple Pencil is sold separately for US $99.

The Samsung Tab A 8.0 with S Pen is the budget tablet to consider if you want an affordable digital sketchpad.

The display is a 8-inch IPS panel with good colours and viewing angles.

Resolution is 1920 x 1200 so that's a 16:10 aspect ratio. This display is capable of playing 1080P videos with small black bars at top and bottom. The combination of resolution and screen size makes everything appears sharp. Pixel density is 283 PPI. Pixelation is not noticeable.

Brightness is good. At maximum brightness, you can even use this under sunlight if you don't mind sunburn.

Overall design looks good. Side bezels are thin. There's no fingerprint sensor so you'll have to rely on face unlock which works well.

The body is made of plastic with a nice matte surface texture. You probably don't need to get a case for this tablet as the plastic body doesn't look like it can be scratched easily. The plastic body material feels like the material that's used to make phone and tablet cases.

The tablet is compact and can be easily held in one hand. It's just 325g so you can hold this for long periods of time without discomfort or hand strain.

There's only one speaker at the bottom and audio quality is good for a budget tablet. The charging port is USB-C and file transfer speeds is USB 2.

At the bottom right is a slot that houses the S Pen.

The tablet comes with 32GB of eMMC 5.1 storage. Storage speed is alright, as in opening apps, searching settings may be slower.

You can expand storage with the microSD card slot.

One hand typing in portrait mode is quite comfortable.

The processor used is the Exynos 7904, Octa-core (2x1.8 GHz Cortex-A73 & 6x1.6 GHz Cortex-A53).

General performance is alright. Sometimes it can be slow but overall performance is smooth. For example, launching apps may be slower, but once the app is opened, the performance is smooth. Loading of webpages is fast.

3GB of RAM is included.

This tablet ships with Samsung One UI version 1.1 and Android 9. It can be upgraded to One UI 2.0 and Android 10 via software updates.

The S Pen included is smaller compared to those S Pens included with the bigger tablets, eg Tab S3, S4, S6, S6 Lite.

This S Pen is so small that it feels like drawing with a toothpick. It's uncomfortable to hold for long periods of time. This S Pen is really designed for clicking on stuff on the screen, and then store away into that bottom slot.

I do recommend buying a larger S Pen to go with this tablet. That of course means spending more money. Alternatives included Staedtler Noris Digital but replacement tips may not be easily available, or get the S Pen from Tab S3, S4, S6, S6 Lite where you can find cheap replacement tips easily. The best S Pen is the one from Tab S4.

This tip used by this S Pen is the same tip used by S Pens made for phones.

This tip is very difficult to remove from the pen. I've frayed my tip after several unsuccessful attempts to remove it.

At the back of the S Pen is a spring loaded button that serves only to help you remove it from the pen slot.

Drawing performance

Drawing performance is good. There is no significant wobble or jitter when drawing diagonal lines slowly.

The display is laminated so the lines look like they are appearing directly beneath the pen tip. If you do look close there seems like a gap but it's not noticeable with normal usage.

There is some input lag as usual so the line will try to catch up with the pen tip or cursor. With my normal drawing speed, I don't find that input lag to be a big issue.

Here's the line quality test from alternative pens. The red lines are from the stock S Pen, black lines are from Tab S6 S Pen and blue lines from the Noris Digital.

Initial activation force for all the pens are low, as in you can press lightly to get a line. However for some reason the lines for the Tab S6 S Pen are thicker. There's no way to adjust pressure settings or pressure curve from Samsung settings so in this case you have to change the brush size to get thinner lines.

This was drawn with Concepts. Pressure sensitivity and all the shortcuts worked well.

Another sketch drawn with Concepts. There are actually many good drawing apps on Android. Concepts is my favourite currently.

Autodesk Sketchbook is another app that performs very well.

Other drawing apps you can try on Android are Infinite Painter, Medibang Paint, IbisPaint X, Krita.

Conclusion

Drawing performance is good. The lines come out just the way I expect and pressure sensitivity works well and is quite accurate.

Oh, battery life is good. You can get 7 hours or more with auto brightness.

There are only two downsides with this tablet. One's the small size of the S Pen that's included. This is a budget tablet so performance is slower compared to other more expensive tablets, but overall performance is still smooth and satisfactory

Overall, this is definitely a tablet I can recommend easily to beginners looking for a budget tablet for drawing. It's at least US $150 cheaper compared to the budget iPad 10.2-inch (US $329) and Apple Pencil (US $99). But since the included S Pen is less than ideal, you have to factor extra money to get another S Pen. You can get third party Tab S4 S Pen (extra nibs included) for less than US $25.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Nice design
+ Good build quality
+ IPS panel with good colours and viewing angles
+ Sharp 8-inch display with 1920 x 1200 resolution
+ Good battery life
+ Decent audio quality
+ 3.5mm headphone jack
+ Decent performance for a budget tablet
+ microSD card slow
+ Can be upgraded to Android 10
- Included S Pen is too small to hold comfortably
- Competitive pricing

Availability

Below are direct links to the product on Amazon.

Amazon.com | Amazon.ca

These are affiliate links which means I earn some commission if there's a sale but at no extra cost to you.

Big thanks to Gaomon for sending over the M106K Pro for this review. Gaomon makes pen tablets and pen displays for digital artists.

I've reviewed the previous model Gaomon M106K in 2017. This new Pro model has several improvements, namely increase of pressure sensitivity to 8,192 levels, it now has tilt sensitivity, the battery-less pen no longer requires charging and it supports Android.

Retail price, at the time of this review, is less than US $60 on AliExpress, with free shipping to selected countries.

Just to give you the bottom line straightaway, the tablet performs well with all the drawing apps I've tested on Mac and Windows. Pressure and tilt sensitivity works consistently and predictably.

Packaging design is simple.

These are all the accessories included:

• Warranty manual
• Quickstart guide
• Card with driver download link location
• Pen case
• Pen nib case
• microUSB to USB-A adaptor
• USB-C to USB-A adaptor
• Artist glove
• Carrying case
• 8 replacement nibs and nib remover
• Data cable for tablet (mini USB to USB-A)

The pen case and accessory carrying case are made of some thick felt material.

These eight replacement pen nibs should last you for a long time.

This tablet supports Android. These are the connecting adaptors provided to connect to Android phones or tablets using microUSB or USB C.

The pen is comfortable to hold with its large rubber grip. It's lightweight and has a solid feel to it.

The two side buttons can be customised to various mouse clicks or keyboard shortcuts.

The carrying case for the tablet is made of soft cloth and comes with draw strings.

Design of the tablet looks clean and simple. The design is similar to the previous M106K model actually.

The tablet is thin. Top and bottom of the tablet are curved while the sides have angular edges.

Build quality is solid.

There's a little cloth pen holder on the side of the tablet.

The 12 physical shortcut buttons have firm feedback, and can be customised to any keyboard shortcuts.

There are 16 soft keys for additional keyboard shortcuts. These can be accessed by tapping on the numbers.

On the back are four rubber feet to prevent the tablet for sliding around on the table.

If you're left handed, you can change the orientation of the tablet with the driver. The L-shaped data cable will be pointing downwards because the mini-USB port can't be reversed like USB-C.

Driver

The drivers I've tested are Windows driver v14.8.115.1177_beta (9 June 2020) and Mac driver v14.4.4.200311 (27 May 2020). I did not experience any glitches.

Windows and Mac drivers have similar functionality except with Windows driver there's the additional Windows Ink feature.

The driver will show that it's connected when there's a tablet connected.

Pressure sensitivity is changed with the slider. You can also use the tablet as in mouse mode, aka pushing the cursor around.

This is where you can customise the 12 Express Keys or 16 Soft Keys. You can also choose not to use them but switching the functionality off.

You can enter your own keyboard shortcuts for the shortcut buttons. Display Switch functionality is there for those who use multiple monitors.

Mapping allows you to map a portion of the tablet to your display. It should be left as default unless you're using a monitor with unusual aspect ratio.

Left handed users can change the orientation here.

Driver installation with Mac OS 10.14 or newer is not as straightforward as on Windows. After installation, when you click on the driver, this dialogue box may pop up. You're to open Mac OS System Preferences and give permission to the driver to work.

Just go to Security & Privacy - Privacy - Accessibility, and add TabletDriverAgent and Gaomon Tablet (located in Applications folder).

If you don't see TabletDriverAgent, uninstall the driver and try to click around the Mac driver.

Drawing performance

Drawing performance is excellent. Pressure and tilt sensitivity works well and predictably with the various drawing software that I've tested on Windows and Mac.

Because the drawing performance is similar on Mac and Windows, I'm just showing the drawing performance on Windows below.

Drawing performance with Photoshop CC is fantastic.

Lines taper nicely, pressure transition between thin and thick is smooth, and the pen is able to maintain consistent pressure when needed.

You can expect the same sort of performance with other drawing apps.

Pressure sensitivity works fine with Adobe Illustrator CC.

Medibang Paint Pro works fine.

Pressure and tilt works with Krita. You'll also be able to see the shape of the cursor change with the pen's direction when the pen tip is hovering close to the tablet.

Concepts is an app made for touchscreen Windows devices. Pressure works here but not tilt.

Clip Studio Paint works great.

Android support

Performance on Android devices varies depending on the device.

Shown above is the Samsung Tab S6. The whole surface area of the Gaomon tablet is mapped to that squarish area on the Samsung tablet. So basically, a wide drawing area is mapped to a less wide area which means the proportion is off. Also note that the are to the right side of the square is cannot be accessed.

The horizontal surface area of the Gaomon tablet is now mapped to the vertical orientation fo the Samsung tablet. Again, the proportion is off.

Surprisingly, the proportion is 1:1 with my XiaoMi Mi Max 2 phone. It's a vertical drawing area mapped to the vertical format phone.

There's no driver for Android so you won't be able to change any settings, eg you can't change the mapping area or pressure sensitivity.

Conclusion

Overall drawing performance is excellent with the various drawing apps I've tested on Windows and MacOS. For US $60, the lowest price I was able to find on AliExpress, it's really worth the money. If you are working with Windows and MacOS, go ahead.

I won't recommend getting this primarily for working with Android because the performance varies with Android devices.

Availability

Prices will vary depending on promotion and seller. Amazon prices are much higher than AliExpress because of higher seller fees.

Direct purchase links:
US | CA | MX | AU | DE | IT | FR | NL | UK
ES | SG | AE | JP | AliExpress

Official website: https://www.gaomon.net/Pen_Tablet/M106KPRO.html

Social media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Gaomonpentablet/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Gaomonpentablet

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 and Tab S7+ have some noticeable upgrades to the 10.5-inch Tab S6 which was released about a year ago.

Most notably, the displays have upgraded with 120Hz refresh rate and the latency for the new S Pen has dropped to 9ms, matching the Apple Pencil on the iPad Pro.

This review is from the perspective of an artist, and will see if the Tab S7+ can be a viable tablet for professional illustration, and whether it can compete with the iPad Pro which seems to the standard portable tablet for many digital artists

Here's a table comparing the differences.

There are two models for Tab S7. The standard Tab S7 comes with an 11-inch 2560 x 1600 resolution IPS panel and the battery capacity is 8,000 mAh. The Tab S7+ comes with a 12.4-inch 2800 x 1752 resolution Super AMOLED panel with battery capacity of 10090 mAh.

Tab S7+ supports fast charging and a fast charger is included. No replacement nibs are included for the S Pen though, but those are cheap and easy to find.

The design looks good. Bezels are thinner even than the iPad Pro, and uniform throughout. Corners are rounded off. The selfie camera is located on the long side.

This tablet is thinner than the S Pen provided. It's 5.7mm vs 6.3mm of the Tab S7, and 5.9mm of the iPad Pro (2018, 2020).

Note the flat sides with flat corner bevels.

The weight is 575g. It's an extremely compact and portable design with no excess. I personally can't hold the Tab S7+ with one hand and draw for more than a minute. Same applies to the iPad Pro 12.9-inch. I need to set the tablet down on a surface for drawing. When you add a case, the tablet gets heavier. If you want a tablet for one hand operation, get the 11-inch instead.

Display size of the 11-inch Tab S7 is about the same size as an A5 sketchbook. Tab S7+ has slightly more room on the short side, and noticeably more room on the long side compared to A5 sketchbook.

The 16:10 aspect ratio is still considered wide so this tablet is best used in landscape mode. When used in portrait mode with certain drawing apps, palettes may take up too much space leaving you with just a thin vertical view of your canvas.

The 2800 x 1752 resolution makes everything look sharp. There is no noticeable pixelation when viewed from normal working distance.

The 16:10 aspect ratio means black bars are smaller when watching 16:9 videos.

With Youtube app, you can view videos at 1440P which is not something the iPad Pro can do (max at 1080P) until iPadOS 14 is released. And you can zoom it to fill the video to the whole screen for a more immersive experience, something the iPad Pro can't do either.

The Tab S7+ is a slightly better media consumption tablet than the iPad Pro due to the AMOLED display and aspect ratio. The 4 way speakers are loud and clear.

Colours look really vibrant on the Super AMOLED display. Some people may consider the colours too vibrant but it's just a personal taste. Samsung has options for more muted look and there are controls to adjust white balance and RGB.

This display is bright enough that colours and contrast still look good under direct sunlight.

Viewing angles are fantastic with no major colour shift except for the slight cyan or magenta cast.

Power and volume buttons are located on the left on the long side.

Unlike Apple which is known for price gouging their storage upgrades, Samsung still has the microSD card slot included. This is great if you are using earlier tablets with micro SD cards because you can just reuse the same card, and have access to all your old files.

You can get a Sandisk 512GB 160MB/s microSD card for around US $110 at the time of this review. Storage is not going to be a problem on this device. There are even 1TB microSD cards.

The S Pen is included but not replacement nibs.

The S Pen is lightweight but not too light. The body has a smooth matte texture and build quality is good.

Colour of the S Pen will match the tablet which is available in black, silver and bronze.

The S Pen is comfortable to hold. It has a cyclindrical design with a flat size for attaching to the tablet. The design is very similar to the Apple Pencil 2.

The S Pen can snap magnetically to the back of the tablet for charging. The battery power is for those wireless Air command gestures. You don't need battery power to use the S Pen for drawing and writing.

The S Pen has to be attached in that specific position with the pen tip pointing to the cameras. Other positions will be out of place because the magnets will not be aligned. The pen can also be attached on the long side of the tablet, away from the volume buttons.

The S Pen supports tilt and pressure sensitivity though I'm not sure how many levels. The cursor will show when the S Pen is hovering about 1cm away and the cursor will always track beneath the pen tip. This is a very accurate pen.

The display is laminated so there's no gap between the pen tip and the line it produces.

The new S Pen has improved latency of 9ms, finally matching that of the Apple Pencil on the iPad Pro which has it since 2017. This is a noticeable upgrade when writing and drawing.

Shown above is the display at 120Hz. The gap between the pen tip and the line as it catches up is small.

You can also choose to drop the refresh rate down to the typical 60Hz. Here you can see the gap is much larger.

Note that whether you will see a bigger or smaller gap will also depend on the app you use. For example, Clip Studio Paint seems to have the larger gap while Samsung Notes has almost no gap.

Drawing performance

Drawing experience is fantastic. The drawing performance is consistent and predictable. Certain apps, eg Clip Studio, will even allow you to adjust the pressure sensitivity curve.

Lines taper well. When drawing with consistent pressures, the lines can maintain uniform thickness. Transition from thin to thick is also smooth. There's no jitter with diagonal lines drawn slowly.

Lines always come out exactly the way I expect them to. Tilt and pressure sensitivity works well, palm rejection too.

Tilt sensitivity works predictably in Autodesk Sketchbook. Pressure and tilt can work together at the same time.

Tilt sensitivity with Concepts is abrupt. There's no transition from thin to thick. So tilt sensitivity implementation will depend on the apps you use.

The pen tip is quite smooth on the glass surface. It's about as smooth as the Apple Pencil. When drawing straight lines, it can be challenging to keep the line straight. You could install a matte screen protector for more control but I'm afraid the rougher matte texture will wear down the rubber S Pen tip quickly. Besides, a mattte screen protector will degrade the image quality, colours, contrast and there's the anti-glare that creates white haze out of reflections. I recommend getting a tempered glass screen protector instead. My Tab S6 has some scratches on the glass so the glass is not scratch-proof.

I do recommend getting a stand or some case that can prop up the tablet so that it's more comfortable to draw on. And the tablet does not produce much heat.

This was sketched on the train with Clip Studio. The only issue here is the pen tip glides on the glass a bit too easily on a moving train.

This was sketched with me seated and the tablet resting on my legs. I won't be able to draw this while standing because my hand will probably cramp under the weight of the tablet.

This was sketched with Clip Studio as well.

Even though the drawing is in vertical format, due to the 16:10 aspect ratio, if you use the tablet in portrait orientation, the canvas space will look squashed by the palettes on the side.

It makes more sense to draw in landscape orientation all the time.

But whether you can actually draw with the tablet in portrait orientation will also depend on the app. Concepts for example has minimal user interface elements so you still get a good amount of canvas to work on.

My drawings typically don't use many layers. Most drawings just have layers for line art, colours, textures and shadows. So that's a minimal of four layers. I'm not sure what's the limit on the number of layers but that will depend on the drawing app you use. With 6GB or 8GB of RAM, having more layers shouldn't be an issue.

This was also drawn with Concepts. The overall drawing performance with the various drawing apps is smooth, responsive and satisfying.

Issues

While 120Hz refresh rate makes OS animation look smooth and improves the drawing latency, it does drain more battery. I get around 7 hours of battery life with 120Hz but that will also depend on the auto-brightness. If you drop down to 60Hz, you can get one to two hours more of battery life. So the battery life of the 120Hz Tab S7 isn't as long as the 120Hz iPad Pro.

Samsung Tab S7+ on left, BenQ SW2700PT AdobeRGB LCD monitor on right. Click for a larger view.

Colours of artworks created on AMOLED display will look less vibrant when viewed on a LCD monitor. The colours won't look the same even though they are supposed to be the same. The only way to match the colours of the AMOLED display to your LCD monitor is to switch from Vibrant to Natural settings for the Display in the system preferences.

And notice the 2560 x 1440 pixelation with my BenQ SW2700PT.

Samsung's on-screen keyboard layout takes some time to get used to. Good thing about Android is there are alternative onscreen keyboards you can install. E.g. Microsoft SwiftKey, Google's Gboard. Another thing I noticed is when on Facebook.com, pressing the backspace button instantly closes the on-screen keyboard. Glitch.

Most apps still save files within the apps, just like on the iPad. It's not a big deal but I found out when upgrading from my Tab S6 and using Samsung's file transfer, the art I created in Concepts were not copied over. So if you're upgrading from an older tablet, make sure you check each app to see if your files have been copied to your new tablet.

You can choose to export the files to the tablet storage but that's an extra step. And each time you update your art, you will need to export the files again.

Drawing apps on Android

The addition of Clip Studio is a huge boost to the Android ecosystem. Clip Studio is about as professional as an illustration or comics drawing app can be. Clip Studio on Android is essentially almost a 100% port of the desktop app. Only downside is it's a monthly subscription app but at just US $25 (single device) or US $44 (two devices) per year, it's a reasonable price for someone who draws a lot with Clip Studio. Your desktop license won't work on Android or iPad.

With Clip Studio, I can now recommend Android tablets for digital artists without any hesitation. Even Krita is now on Android. And Tayasui Sketches which used to be an exclusive on iPad is also available on Android. Concepts is another wonderful drawing app too, available on all platforms. There are still more quality drawing apps on iPad, Procreate being the most popular, but sometimes all you need is just one good app and Clip Studio on Android is that app.

I hope there will be better and more graphic design, photo and video editing on Android in the future. Affinity Photo and Designer on iPad are fantastic. Hopefully they will be port over to Android. One can always wish, right?

Samsung Dex

Samsung Dex is the desktop user interface for Android. It's designed to mimic desktop OS with minor differences. But overall, the file system is very familiar and works way better than iPad's Files app. For example, I could connect a SD card reader and copy my 4K videos over at USB 3 speeds. On the iPad Pro, file transfer from SD card reader is slow, and there's not even a progress bar. Sometimes when copying files or download files from the web, you won't even know if the file is moving, and since there's no progress bar you won't know when your file copy or download will complete. Files app functionality on iOS is idiotic.

Mouse implementation is exactly the same as desktop.

It will be good for Samsung to add more features to desk in the future. E.g. Having a real desktop where you can actually put files and folders rather than only apps.

Conclusion

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+ is the best Android tablet right now, one that can actually compete with the Apple iPad Pro 2020. And it's even cheaper. The base model Tab S7+ with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage cost US $849 and includes the S Pen. The 12.9-inch iPad Pro 2020 with 6GB RAM and 128GB storage cost US $999 and Apple Pencil 2 is another $129. The price difference is significant.

The Tab S7 looks good and has solid build quality.

I would say the Apple Pencil is slightly more sensitive compared to the S Pen especially at really low pressure, but the performance is not significantly different. So I can't say the Apple Pencil is so much better especially now when the S Pen latency is similar.

The main downside for me is the battery life with the 120Hz display is lower compared to iPad Pro. 7 hours is still pretty decent battery life. And if you don't mind running at 60Hz, you get more battery life. The latency is still not bad. More battery life is more useful than the 120Hz display.

Overall, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+ is a good buy. It could also double as an actual computer if you don't need to install specialised software that's not available on Android. It's certainly more of a computer than the iPad Pro.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Beautiful design
+ Compact and portable (575g)
+ Solid build quality
+ High resolution OLED display with vibrant colours
+ Good battery life but could be better
+ 4-way speakers with good audio quality
+ Ultra wide angle camera included with standard camera
+ S Pen included
+ Improved pen latency
+ S Pen support tilt and pressure sensitivity
+ S Pen is powered by battery but you don't need power to draw or write
+ S Pen is accurate
+ S Pen replacement nibs are cheap
+ Palm rejection works well
+ Snappy performance
+ Good drawing performance
+ No jitter when drawing diagonal lines slowly
+ Micro SD card slot
+ Base model with 6GB RAM, 128GB storage
+ Android 10
+ Samsung DeX available
- No headphone jack
- S Pen replacement tips not included
- OLED colours too vibrant and will make the same art look less saturated on LCD displays
- Face unlock and under-screen fingerprint sensor not flawless
- Pricey
- 120Hz drains battery faster than 60Hz

Availability

You can find Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 and S7+ and more reviews on Amazon. Links below are affiliate links which means I earn some commission for each sale referred but at no extra cost to you. You support helps me because I'm not sponsored. My tablet was bought from the secondhand market.

Amazon US | CA | UK | DE | FR | ES | IT | JP

The new Apple iPad Air 4 has a new design, A14 chip and 4GB RAM.

Since the "new" design is actually the 11-inch iPad Pro design, here's a table for your quick comparison.

This design is almost identical to the iPad Pro 11-inch from 2018.

While the iPad Pro 12.9 has a larger display, the iPad Air is significantly more portable even with a case added.

So now you get to use Apple Pencil 2 which you can attach to the flat side of the tablet for charging.

iPad Air 4 is available in five colours, namely Space Gray, Silver, Green, Rose Gold and Sky Blue. I bought the Sky Blue version and the colour is very subtle to the point that I won't know it's blue until I look at the label on the box.

There's still the single camera back there, a wide angle f/1.8 with electronic image stabilisation. There's a larger microphone but no flash light that's on the iPad Pro.

All the iPad Pro 11 accessories can be used with the iPad Air 4 since they share the same design.

The fingerprint sensor built into the power button is convenient and works effectively.

The iPad Air now gets the more versatile USB-C. You can get a cheap non-Apple USB-C hub and connect external display, microSD card, USB devices such as microphones, external storage and more.

Battery life is great. I got around 9hr+ of battery life using it at home. You can expect shorter battery life if you use this outdoors under bright conditions as the auto-brightness will max out the brightness.

Battery charging speed is quite slow though so it's best to charge it overnight. The 20W charger included is not considered a fast charger.

There are four sets of speaker grills but audio only comes out from two, the bottom two when the tablet is in landscape format. Audio quality is loud and clear.

One slight difference between the iPad Air 4 and iPad Pro 11 is the screen size which is 10.9-inch vs 11-inch and the resolution 2360 x 1640 and 2388 x 1668.

iPad Air 4 has 28 pixels fewer from the length and width.

Physical dimensions is 247.6 x 178.5 x 6.1mm vs 247.6 x 178.5 x 5.9mm. The iPad Pro 11 is 0.2mm thinner. iPad Air 4 (wifi) weighs 458g, 13g lighter.

Specifications

The processor has been upgraded to the A14 chip and there is 4GB of RAM. In real world, there's no speed difference between the iPad Air 4 and iPad Pro 2018, or even the iPad Air 3 (2019).

The new processor is not going to make you draw better or faster. The iPad Air 2018 by today's standard is still an incredibly powerful tablet.

The main selling points for the iPad Air 4 are the laminated display and compact design that makes it so portable, and it's cheaper than the iPad Pro. Without the fingerprint sensor from the previous model, the bezels can now be shrunk so effectively you are getting a larger display (up for 10.5inch) in a smaller body with the same fantastic battery life.

The tablet is relatively lightweight and even with a case, using with one hand doesn't get too tiring that easily. The lighter weight allows you to stand and sketch while holding the tablet in one hand.

How much storage do you need

I bought the model with 64GB of storage. The system files and updates took up 16.5GB of storage.

Thankfully can be uninstalled to free up more storage.

I go it down to 12.8GB after uninstalling unwanted apps and installing all the apps I use and importing some files over, I used around 25GB, which means I'm only left with 39GB of storage left.

64GB for drawing should be sufficient. The upgrade to 256GB is an extra US $150 (SGD $220).

The alternative to getting more storage is to get the 200GB iCloud plan which cost US $3 per month. With the $150 you saved from not upgrading, you can get at least 4 years worth of iCloud.

iCloud serves two functions, as a backup and as online storage. You will probably want to get iCloud anyway since it provides online backup for your iPad and the 50GB plan (US $1/month) is certainly not enough to backup a 64GB tablet.

Downside to getting the 64GB model and 200GB iCloud is when you run out of space on the iPad Air, you have to manually transfer the files over to iCloud. It's a minor inconvenience unless you churn out 20-30GB worth of files often.

Display

Colours on the LCD display look great out of the box. Many prefer the extra vibrant colours of AMOLED but personally I still prefer the more "natural" colours of LCD.

Pixel density is 264 PPI so all the user interface, text, fonts, icons, visual look sharp and detailed.

There's no gap between the pen tip and the line beneath due to the laminated display. So when you're writing or drawing, the line will look like it's coming from directly beneath the pen tip.

The display is glossy and will attract fingerprints easily. When drawing, the pen tip is slightly slippery on the glass surface which can affect control. It's probably a 4 out of 5 where 5 is extremely slippery.

Getting a matte screen protector will provide a more tactile experience when drawing and give you more control. But the downside is at certain angles, the anti-glare on the matte screen protector will create a white haze and affect the contrast of the display significantly. The anti-glare makes working on a matte screen protector incredibly frustrating when you're outdoors because light is everywhere to reflect off the display.

If you do want to get a matte screen protector, I recommend SuperShieldz which is cheap and good. If you don't like using a matte screen protector, you remove it without feeling like you wasted too much money.

The canvas area for drawing is smaller compared to a 12.9-inch iPad Pro but you still get a good amount of space to draw on. It's basically likely drawing on an A5-sized sketchbook. I actually find the canvas size still very useable.

Here's how much space the user interface elements in Procreate take up.

Latency

The display is 60Hz which is unlike the 120Hz you get with the iPad Pro.

Animation on the iPad Air 4 will appear more choppy, relatively speaking. I'm talking about animation effects like scrolling of webpages, zooming in and out, writing and drawing.

When drawing, the latency is actually not as noticeable compared to say, scrolling a webpage or have the apps zoom out back into the small icons. Reason being you don't draw long sweeping lines all the time while drawing. But yes, you will notice slightly choppier animation.

Overall drawing experience is satisfying. Apple Pencil is accurate and very sensitive, especially when drawing with really low pressure. You can get a line as long as the tip is touching the glass even if you don't apply pressure.

I highly recommend getting a tablet to prop up the tablet to draw so that it's better for your posture. The stand I'm using here is the Parblo PR 100 which can be deployed at various angles and has fantastic grip on the table.

Issues

Both iPad Air 4 and iPad Pro 2018 has 4GB of RAM but in Procreate, you can't get to create as many layers on the iPad Air 4.

These are the number of layers you get with an 300DPI A4 file in Procreate compared to other iPads

I am not sure if the limitation is from the iPadOS or from Procreate.

Conclusion

Design of the iPad Air 4 looks great. Drawing performance is fantastic.

Price of the 64GB iPad Air 4 is $599, which is $100 more than the previous model. Since the drawing performance is the same, that extra $100 is just for the change in design. So I don't really recommend upgrading from iPad Air 3 (that's like making a loss on selling and paying extra to buy again).

iPad Air 4 is a good product. Having said that, in terms of value for money, I recommend getting a refurbished iPad Pro 11-inch (2020) instead.

I always recommend refurbished Apple products because they are usually 15% off retail price and still comes with 1 year warranty. Refurbished products usually come out 6 months after official launch date. iPad Pro 2020 was launched in March 2020 and I've already seen refurbished units appear on Apple's website (which they have since delisted coincidentally during the iPad Air 4 launch period, but they will be back).

So here's my recommendation breakdown depending on your budget. BN = Brand new, Refurbished = RF

• US $429 - BN 128GB iPad 10.2-inch (2020)
• $509 - RF 64GB iPad Air 4
• $599 - BN 64GB iPad Air 4
• $636 - RF 256GB iPad Air 4
• $679 - RF 128GB 11-inch iPad Pro (2020)
• $749 - BN 256GB iPad Air 4
• $764 - RF 256GB 11-inch iPad Pro (2020)
• $799 - BN 128GB 11-inch iPad Pro (2020)

If you are a beginner who wants to learn digital art, go for the 128GB iPad 10.2-inch (2020) which is US $429. I've seen the 2019 model being discounted $100 during Christmas shopping season on Amazon so chances are the 2020 may also get that discount in December.

If you have more budget and want a nicer looking tablet today, then the next model to consider is the 64GB iPad Air 4.

I do recommend the refurbished 11-inch iPad Pro (2020) though because for $80 more you get extra 64GB storage, 120Hz ProMotion, and 4 way speakers.

Ultimately, you will still need to spend $99-129 for the Apple Pencil (1/2) and $3/month for the 200GB iCloud. Everything adds up.

Main selling point of the iPad for drawing is the large number of well designed drawing and graphic design apps available. If you're not that big into drawing, consider the Samsung Tab S7 instead which I think is more worth the money at US $640 because you get 128GB storage, microSD card slot, 120Hz display, S Pen included and Samsung Dex is very useful. It's not like you can't draw on the Samsung Tab S7 because there is Clip Studio Paint which is an awesome illustration app. Still cheaper than the refurbished 11-inch iPad Pro (2020) with Apple Pencil 2 by $160+. Do check out my Samsung Tab S7+ review.

Let me know in the comments section if you have any questions.

Update 25 Oct 2020: Procreate will check on the layer limit

I'm comparing the iPad Air 2020 and Samsung Tab S7 (not the Tab S7+) because the price difference is not big.

Here's a table for your quick comparison.

Just to give you the bottom line up front, if you're not that big into drawing, the Samsung Tab S7 offers better value for money simply because it's cheaper and has better specifications. The latest price on Amazon US was $549 (after a $100 coupon) and for that price you get more storage, RAM and the S Pen included. The only edge that the iPad Air has is not the hardware but the huge variety of illustration and graphic design apps available from the Apple App Store.

But that's not to say that you can't get much drawing done of the Samsung Tab S7. Clip Studio Paint, an awesome illustration app, is now available on Samsung Galaxy tablets and that app is good enough that you won't need to use other drawing apps.

Both tablets look good. They are thin, lightweight for their size, and very portable.

Both screens look good. Colours are vibrant and screen is bright.

The Apple Pencil cost US $129 and is not included. So the total price of iPad Air 2020 and Apple Pencil is $728 whereas the Tab S7 is just US $549. The price savings with the Samsung tablet is significant.

Both displays are laminated so there's no gap between the pen tip and the line it creates.

I do find that the Apple Pencil is more sensitive when drawing with very light pressure. As long as the Apple Pencil tip touches the display, it can produce a line. You do need to press down slightly to get a line with the Samsung S Pen, but it's very easy to get used to. Certain drawing apps will also allow you to adjust the pressure sensitivity curve.

Both pens support tilt sensitivity as well and the Apple Pencil does it better in the sense that it's easier to get a wider range of stroke when you change the tilt gradually.

In terms of drawing performance, I would rank iPad Air slightly higher mostly because of the Apple Pencil better performance at low pressure and with tilt.

However, in terms of latency, Samsung Tab S7 uses a 120Hz display and the S Pen has been upgraded to the point even when drawing and writing fast, the gap is very minimal as the line tries to catch up with the pen tip. On the iPad Air, the animation of the line appearing can appear choppy, relatively speaking.

So each tablet and stylus combination has their own pros and cons.

Aspect ratio for Tab S7 is 16:10 which is wider than the iPad Air. It's more appropriate to use the Tab S7 in landscape compared to portrait orientation.

In vertical orientation, Tab S7's canvas area can be quite tight.

iPad Air's aspect ratio is close to 4:3 and is usable in both vertical and landscape orientation.

The main selling point of using the iPad Air, or of all iPads, for drawing is the huge variety of drawing and graphic design apps available from the App Store. This is one area where Android still has to catch up.

Here's a list of apps that I like from Apple App Store

• Procreate - User friendly, lots of features, well designed for tablets
• Clip Studio Paint - Same features as desktop
• Adobe Photoshop - As powerful as desktop Photoshop but with different UI
• Adobe Illustrator - Vector illustration and graphic design
• Vectonator - Vector illustration and graphic design
• Affinity Designer - Vector illustration and graphic design
• Affinity Photo - Photo editing
• Paintstorm - Geared towards traditional painting
• Concepts - Vector illustration app
• Adobe Lightroom - Photo editing

On Android there are

• Clip Studio Paint - Same features as desktop
• Concepts - Vector illustration app
• Krita - Same features as desktop
• Adobe Lightroom - Photo editing

There are other drawing Android apps like ArtFlow, Autodesk Sketchbook and ibisPaint X which are also not bad.

One area where Android apps is lacking is with graphic design apps. On the iPad, there's Affinity Designer and there's even Adobe Illustrator now. Say you want to create a thumbnail with text and photo for a Youtube video, it's kinda difficult to do that on Android. Maybe I'm wrong. In which case do recommend to me an Android app that can allow me to do what I can do with Affinity Designer and Adobe Illustrator.

While Android does not have that many drawing apps, it has Clip Studio Paint and sometimes if you have one good app, that's all that matters. It's not like you're going to use so many drawing apps even if they are available to you. People just use one or two drawing apps and stick with them. Clip Studio Paint is an excellent illustration app.

Things I like about Tab S7

Samsung Dex is the desktop version of Android. It gives you a taskbar, icons on the desktop, and ability to move windows around, resize them. I find Samsung Dex to be incredibly useful. Samsung Dex is best used when connected to an external display. I sometimes use it edit photos with Adobe Lightroom, upload the photos to my blog, and write my blog. You can do the same on iPad but the iPadOS file system does not make the job simple.

Samsung Dex is what makes Tab S7 behaves more like a computer than the iPad ever will be. When you connect iPad to external display, it just does a mirror so what's the point?

The other thing I like is the familiar file management system. There are some features missing from traditional Windows or MacOS file system but on a whole, the file system is very familiar. I can go on and on about the deficiency of the file system on iPad or iOS but I won't do that because it just makes me frustrated.

Let me give you one example. Recently I wanted to transfer some RAW photo files to Google Drive through the Files app. Transfer was successful but that RAW file (no on Google Drive) shown on Files app cannot be selected, and cannot be deleted. This inability to select certain files happens way too often, and sometimes there will not be any file extensions shown when I need the file extension to identify certain files. Files app and file management on iPad is very primitive.

If you're looking for a computer/laptop replacement and you don't need to use specific desktop software, Samsung Tab S7 is the better choice.

Also note that with certain apps on iPad, files are only saved within the apps. Eg. Procreate files are saved within Procreate. That means you're almost locked into the Apple ecosystem when you want to upgrade in the future.

Conclusion

From the artist/graphic designer perspective, the iPad Air is more versatile only because of the variety of illustration and graphic design apps available through the Apple App Store.

If you're not that big into drawing, I mean if you do occasional drawing, the Samsung Tab S7 offers good value for money. US $728 vs $549. That's $179 savings.

Clip Studio Paint is subscription based model on Android and cost US $25 per year. With the $179 savings, you can subscribe for 7 years. CSP does not lock you in because you can use CSP on iPad, Windows, Mac and Android.

The Gaomon M10K Pro is a drawing tablet Gaomon released towards the end of 2020.

This is a 10 x 6 inch drawing tablet that supports tilt and 8192 levels of pressure sensitivity with a pen that is battery-free. Retail price is US $69 which may or may not include free shipping depending on who you buy from. The pricing is quite competitive.

Items included in the box are:

• Pen and pen case
• Pouch with nib remover and 8 replacement pen nibs
• Artist glove
• Quick start guide
• Clothed tablet case
• USB cable
• USB C to USB A adapter
• USB C to Micro USB adapter

The USB cable that connects to the computer is USB type A.

Gaomon is pretty generous with replacement pen nibs.

These USB-C and Micro USD adapters are included so that you can connect to Android phones and tablets.

The included small pouch is useful because you can throw all the USB adapters in it as well.

Build quality of the pen is solid. It's comfortable to hold with its large rubber grip. This pen is not powered by battery so no charging is required.

The two side buttons (customisable) on the pen have nice feedback when pressed.

Design of the tablet is simple and clean. Build quality is good. It's well made.

It's about as thin as other drawing tablets I've reviewed. Thinner than my 15-inch laptop.

Top and bottom are tapered so that you can rest your wrist comfortably on it.

On the back are four rubber feet with good grip on table.

On the side is a slot that you can use to hold the pen.

There's a total of 10 customisable physical shortcut buttons. Five above the scroll wheel, and five below.

The buttons have firm feedback when pressed.

The button in the middle of the touch-sensitive scroll wheel allows you to switch between different functions. The default functions allow you to change brush size, scroll and zoom. The scroll wheel works quite well. Function switch also works fine.

This tablet is almost the same size as my 15-inch laptop.

Because the port on the tablet is a Micro USB, if you use the tablet in left handed mode, the cable will point downwards.

Driver

The drivers I've tested at Windows driver v14.8.133.1259 and Mac v14.4.5.200924. Their features are almost similar except for the additional Windows Ink functionality which you may or may not have to turn off if there are issues with pressure sensitivity or pen recognition.

Oh, the drivers have to be downloaded from Gaomon's website since they are not provided in the box. Windows installation is straightforward. MacOS installation requires more steps but there are detailed instructions provided on Gaomon's website.

Pressure sensitivity can be adjusted with the slider. You can't plot points on the pressure curve. Two side buttons on the pen are customisable.

The 10 physical shortcut buttons and the scroll wheel can be customised to mouse clicks, keyboard shortcuts, switch display and to launch apps.

The keyboard shortcuts work well.

You can change the orientation of the tablet here if you're left handed.

Drawing performance

Overall drawing performance on Mac and Windows is fantastic. The pen is sensitive and accurate. Line quality is predictable.

Photoshop CC 2021 (Mac) performs well. Pressure sensitivity works well with Adobe Illustrator CC 2021 too.

Zoom does not work well with Medibang Paint Pro (Mac). I was able to use the physical shortcut buttons and scroll wheel to zoom out, but I can't zoom in for close up. This problem does not happen with Windows driver.

Krita (Mac). Tilt sensitivity works well.

Clip Studio Paint (Mac) performs well.G+

Pressure sensitivity works well with Affinity Photo (Mac) and Affinity Designer (Mac).

I don't have any drawing tests on Windows because the performance is similar to Mac.

Drawing on Android

Support for Gaomon M10K Pro on Android will vary depending on the device you're using and the Android system, version 6 or newer is required.

You may experience issues with cursor not appearing or mapping is off.

When I connected the tablet to my Xiaomi Android phone (yes I know it's crushes quite badly), pressure sensitivity works fine. However, only the left side of the tablet is mapped to the vertical orientation of the phone. Thankfully the cursor is visible.

Drawing performance is alright but there's no driver so you won't be able to customise the shortcut buttons or adjust the pressure curve.

With my Samsung Android tablet, the mapping is off.

The horizontal drawing tablet is mapped to the vertical Android tablet so the orientation is off, and drawing is, well, disorienting.

When Android tablet is vertical, only the left portion of the drawing tablet is mapped and that portion's aspect ratio does not match the Android tablet, hence drawing feels disorienting as well.

In short, this is a tablet that will perform best when used with Windows and MacOS. While it's nice to be able to draw on Android devices, don't buy it if that's your primary usage.

Conclusion

The Gaomon M10K Pro drawing tablet looks good and is well built. Drawing performance is fantastic on Windows and MacOS. Pricing is competitive with other brands so overall it's quite worth the money.

Downsides: functionality with Android devices can be surprising. And there's the zoom issue with Medibang Paint Pro (Mac).

Availability

You can get this tablet and find more reviews on Amazon:
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de | Amazon.fr | Amazon.it | Amazon.es | Amazon.com.au | Amazon.co.jp | Amazon.sg | AliExpress

The Huion HS611 is a drawing pen tablet released in early 2020. It supports up to 8,192 levels of pressure, 60 degrees tilt sensitivity and can work with Android devices as well.

Price at the time of this review is US $79.99 from Huion's online store. Amazon US has it too and it's sometimes on discount.

This tablet is available in three colours: Coral Red, Starry Blue and Space Grey.

The packaging box here shows the red model even though it's the black one in it.

Items included are

• USB-C to USB-A cable
• USB-A to USB-C adapter
• USB-A to micro USB adapter
• Instruction manual
• Artist glove
• Pen stand with 10 replacement nibs
• Pen (PW500)

These are the adapters to use to connect the tablet to your Android device.

The PW500 pen is lightweight but has solid build quality. It's comfortable to hold with the large rubber grip. It's not powered by battery so no charging required.

This pen supports tilt sensitivity and up to 8,192 level of pressure sensitivity.

There are two side buttons which are customisable to various shortcuts. The pen nib will retract slightly which is the typical.

The small pen stand included allows the pen to rest horizontally and vertical. You can unscrew the bottom to reveal 8 replacement nibs.

The active drawing area is 10 x 6 inches. This is a good size to work with, and is the size I always recommend.

There are 10 physical customisable shortcut buttons on the left. The buttons are smaller than many other tablets I've use but thankfully they are big enough to locate and press accurately, and have good feedback.

There's a touch-sensitive stripe at the top of the tablet. This left area with the long line allows you to swipe left and right to make adjustments, eg zoom, scroll, change brush size. The touch stripe doesn't work with Mac driver 14.5.0.201120 but works with 15.2.5.464_beta. Windows driver works fine.

On the right side are pre-programmed touch-sensitive shortcuts. There are controls for volume, media playback, switching between apps (Alt+Tab) and showing the desktop (Win Key + D), and these controls only work for Windows.

I like to place my tablet like this and I find that my wrist would accidentally touch and activate the top right touch-button way too often.

There is the option to enable or disable the physical and/or touch sensitive buttons, but for some reason the functionality to turn off the touch sensitive button doesn't work (with Win driver v14.8.166.1482 and Mac driver 15.2.5.464_beta)

And because that particular button is actually the Win Key + D keyboard shortcut, on MacOS, that actually is read as Cmd + D which can be different shortcuts depending on situations, e.g.

1. With certain browsers, Cmd + D is bookmark a webpage
2. With MacOS Finder, when a file is selected, Cmd + D is to duplicate the selected item

The touch buttons that adjust audio, media playback work on MacOS too.

There's a little sleeve on the side to hold the pen.

On the back are 4 rubber feet at the corners.

The tablet is thinner than the pen included.

All the corners are rounded off nicely, and edges are beveled.

The design with the dots/speckles/star dust or whatever that's called. The dots sometimes reminds me of dust so I guess dust can blend in well with this design. A cleaner design without the dots would probably look nicer.

Driver

The tablet driver has to be downloaded from Huion's website.

I've tested both Mac and Windows driver from Dec 2020 and they work well generally except I wasn't able turn off touch sensitivity, and on MacOS the touch-sensitive buttons don't work as they should.

This is where you can customise the two side buttons. With the Windows driver, you can move the two dots to adjusts the pressure curve.

The ten physical shortcut buttons and the touch stripe can be configured here.

These are the various shortcuts you can assign to the physical shortcut buttons. Switch Display is for switching the cursor between multiple displays and Switch Brush is to toggle between brush and eraser.

Left handed users can change the orientation of the tablet here. The USB cable uses USB-C so you can reverse the cable to point upwards.

Drawing performance

Lines come out just the way I expect them too. The pen is accurate. Pressure and tilt sensitivity work great. Drawing performance is consistent and predictable. I did not experience any glitches or strange behaviour. This is true for various drawing software I've tested on both Mac and Windows.

Photoshop (Win)

Clip Studio Paint (Win)

Medibang Paint Pro (Win)

Krita (Win)

Photoshop (Mac)

Clip Studio Paint (Mac)

Medibang Paint Pro (Mac)

Krita (Mac)

Android support

When I connected the tablet to my Android tablet and phone, the cursor does not appear. When I click with the pen, some things were being clicked but because you can't see the cursor, you can't click on what you want to click.

Anyway, Android support with drawing tablets is always a hit or miss. I don't recommend getting any tablets to work with Android because there's no way to confirmed if it will work properly with your device.

Conclusion

The Huion HS611 is a well built drawing tablet with fantastic drawing performance. The design looks okay – I don't like or dislike the look of the tablet.

I'm pretty sure you will be satisfied with its drawing performance if you choose to get it.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Good build quality
+ Excellent drawing performance
+ 10 physical customisable shortcut buttons
+ Pen not powered by battery
+ 8 replacement nibs
+ Support for tilt and 8192 levels of pressure sensitivity
- Design looks okay
- Touch sensitive controls can't be turned off (driver issue)
- Android support hit and miss

Availability

You can find the Huion HS611 and more reviews via these links:
Huion online store | Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP)

XP-Pen currently has two series of pen tablets for digital artists. There's the Star series which features a more angular design and the Deco series which has rounded and curved design. Other than the design differences, the functionality and features of the Star and Deco series are kinda comparable. Maybe there are other significant differences but I find it difficult to spot.

Deco Mini 7 comes in two models, the XP-Pen Deco Mini 7 Wireless (US $59) and the wired (US $49).

These are the items included:

• P05D battery-free pen
• USB-A to USB-C data cable
• USB-A to micro-USB adapter
• USB-A to USB-C adapter
• 10x replacement nibs
• Nib remover
• USB-A wireless receiver
• Manual

These are the USB-C and micro-USB adapters included so that the tablet can be used with Android.

I experienced connection issues with the wireless receiver under certain situations.

With the desktop Mac I'm using that already had lots of wireless devices (Bluetooth and wifi) connected, the connection with the tablet was choppy. Sometimes the cursor would move slow, sometimes in a choppy manner. This choppy connection issue happens when the tablet is one keyboard length away, which isn't too far away. Wireless connection is strong if the tablet is just besides the receiver which tells me that there is definitely some wireless interference somewhere.

When used with my laptop which is not connected to other wireless devices, connection is good.

So if you use multiple wireless devices, this is something you should take note of, unless you plan on placing the tablet just beside your USB port.

This by the way is a review unit from XP-Pen.

The active drawing area is 7 x 4.37 inches. I usually recommend people get a graphics tablet that's at least 10 x 6 inches because that's a size that works well with laptop's small display as well as much larger 27 - 32 inch displays.

It has been a while since I used a smaller tablet like this and I've got to say that I still recommend people to get 10 x 6 inches if they have the budget to do so, and if they intend to work on the tablet for long periods of time.

When you pair a small graphics tablet to a large monitor (I'm using 27-inch monitor), a small movement with the pen will translate to a large movement on the display. It will take time to get used to be able to control the cursor movement precisely. That's the main concern when getting a smaller tablet. But 7 x 4.37 inches is not that small. Smaller ones can be 6 by 4 inches.

That's the back. You can use the serial number to download ArtRage Lite for free (normally US $29). If you want free apps, check out Medibang Paint Pro and Krita too.

Oh, to protect the drawing surface from scratches, XP-Pen has this protective plastic/film that you have to peel off. It's quite challenging to peel that off so keep scratching it with your fingernails until you see a tear and pull it off.

Build quality is solid. The rounded corners and curved edges are nice.

There are 8 customisable physical shortcut buttons on the side.

Left handed users can use the driver to turn the tablet orientation 180 degrees. Since this is wireless, you don't have to worry about the cable going up or down.

The L-shaped data cable is USB-C so you can have the cable point in either direction. That cable is used for charging the internal battery which is rated to last at least 10 hours of continuous drawing. When charging, the tablet can still be used. The tablet will power off after 5 minutes of inactivity though to conserve battery life.

10 hours continuous use to me is kinda short if you're going to be drawing a lot. If you draw 4 hours a day. You'll probably have to charge the tablet every 3 days. If you don't want to deal with the charging, just get the wired Deco Mini 7 model which is $10 cheaper.

This is the P05D which supports tilt sensitivity and up to 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity.

It's not powered by battery so no charging required.

The pen has good build quality. Design looks good and it's comfortable to hold with its large rubber grip. The nib moves slightly just like others from most styluses.

Driver

The driver I'm using is the XP-PENMac_3.0.8_210112(New UI Beta Driver) released on 14 Jan 2021.

I tried the XP-PENMac_2.1.8.210119(Official Driver) released on 20 Jan 2021 but it didn't work for me – the cursor could move but I couldn't click on anything.

These XP-Pen drivers are suppose to work for MacOS 10.14 and 11 Big Sur. Thankfully at least one worked for me.

MacOS driver installation is not that straightforward and requires many steps. There are installation instructions for MacOS 10.14 and MacOS 10.15.

And finally there was one issue. The MacOS driver has to be launched each time you want to use the tablet. Apparently installing the driver, at time of this review, does not mean the driver will do its magic in the background all the time.

The workaround is simple: just use MacOS System Preferences to have the driver launch (and hide) automatically each time you power on.

And don't quit the driver or the tablet won't work (cursor won't move) again. Use the red cross button or just hide the app to background.

Here's where you can customise the 8 physical shortcut buttons, aka ExpressKeys

The most important thing here is you can rotate the orientation 180 degrees. This is for left handers.

Pressure curve can be adjusted by moving the square dot around.

These are the other shortcuts you can set to the pen's buttons or ExpressKeys. The more useful ones are probably "Switch Monitor" which will move the cursor to another display if you're using dual monitors, and Precision mode which will slow down the cursor's movement so that you can draw more precisely.

Drawing performance

Drawing performance is excellent on MacOS. I did not test the tablet with Windows though.

The pen is very sensitive. Pressure and tilt sensitivity works well. Lines can taper smoothly. Transition from thin to thick lines, vice versa, is smooth. Line were able to come out just the way I want them too.

Initial activation force is low, even lower compared to pen displays which is not surprising.

Photoshop CC 2021

Clip Studio Paint

Medibang Paint Pro

Krita

Pressure and tilt also work well with Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer and Adobe Illustrator.

Drawing on Android

Using with Android is plug and play, no driver installation needed.

Tilt and pressure sensitivity work with Android. But since there's no driver, you won't be able to adjust the pressure curve or use the ExpressKeys.

The tablet and your Android device have to be in portrait orientation for the cursor tracking to match.

Shown in the photo above is the tablet used together with the Samsung Tab S7+. This use case does not make sense because you can already draw on the Samsung tablet with the S Pen.

To have the tablet able to work with Android is a nice extra. Note that the cursor may not appear with certain Android devices. That's a risk you have to understand if you want to buy this tablet specifically to use with an Android tablet. E.g. You may have a large tablet that doesn't come with an active stylus and want to use Clip Studio Paint (Android) which is an awesome drawing app.

Conclusion

Design and build quality is good. Drawing performance is excellent. Performance is consistent and predictable.

There are only minor issues I noticed.

First, MacOS driver has to be launched each time before the tablet can function. Workaround is to set the driver to launch at login since installation doesn't do that for you.

Second, if you use multiple wireless devices with your computer, you may expect some wireless connection issues.

Third. 10 hours continuous battery life is kinda short to me. If you draw a lot, definitely check out XP-Pen's other wireless tablets that offer longer battery life, e.g. 14 hours with US $69 XP-Pen Star 05 and 16 hours with US $86 XP-Pen Star 06 (one of top three tablets I always recommend), but they are more expensive.

If I want to buy a Deco Mini 7, I may probably go with the wired model.

Pros and cons at a glance
Pros
+ Nice looking design
+ Good build quality
+ Up to 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity
+ Tilt sensitivity support
+ Wireless
+ 8 physical shortcut buttons
+ 10 replacement nibs included
+ Tablet usable while charging
+ Has left-handed mode
+ 5 minutes auto power-off to conserve battery life

Cons
- MacOS driver has to be launched manually for tablet to work
- Wireless connection issues with other wireless devices
- 10 hours battery life feels short

Where to buy

At the time of this review, XP-Pen Deco Mini 7 Wireless is US $59 on XP-Pen's online store.

Huion Inspiroy KeyDial K200 is an interesting product that combines a keyboard, dial and tablet into one drawing device. Official retail price is US $169.

Who is this product for?

This drawing tablet is for digital artist who don't want to waste seconds of time moving the hand away to an actual keyboard. When I use drawing tablets, I always try to have my wireless keyboard on the left to be more productive, and so that my keyboard hand won't get in the way of the drawing hand. This tablet is for people who really value time.

The drawing tablet is also for people who work with Windows tablets or 2-in-1 devices that don't have keyboards or pressure sensitive pens. To be able to access keyboard shortcuts even with a partial keyboard can improve productivity significantly.

If you think there are other use cases for this drawing tablet, let me know in the comments section.

You can find the full specs on Huion KD200 product page.

Big thanks again to Huion for providing the review unit so that I can show you guys what to expect.

These are the items included:

• Artist glove
• Manual
• Wireless USB receiver
• USB-C to A data cable
• Huion PW517 battery-less pen
• Pen stand
• Nib remover and 10x replacement nib

This is the USB receiver for the wireless tablet. Battery life from the 1100mAh battery is rated to be around 18 hours. Full charge takes 1.2 to 3 hours. The tablet can still be used while charging.

The tablet can work with Android devices. No micro-USB and USB-C adapters are included this time because the tablet now supports Bluetooth 5 connection.

You can also use Bluetooth to connect your computer to the tablet, so you don't actually need to use the USB receiver.

The Huion PW517 supports tilt sensitivity and up to 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity. It's not powered by battery so no charging required.

Design of the pen looks good. Build quality is solid. It's also comfortable to hold with its large rubber grip.

By the way, this is the same pen from the Huion Kamvas 16 (2021) pen display.

The two side buttons can be customised to mouse clicks, keyboard shortcuts and other functions.

The pen tip has slight lateral movement rather than in-out movement. This is actually better compared to pens from other brands where you can feel the in-out movement.

The pen stand is quite stable, solid build.

The nib remover and 10 replacement nibs are kept in the pen stand.

The Huion Inspiroy KeyDial KD200 looks good. Build quality is solid. Active drawing area is 8.9 x 5.6 inch. This is considered a medium sized tablet that should work well with most monitor sizes, from laptops to 27-inch displays or larger.

The partial keyboard is located on the left, which means this product is designed for right handed users.

The keys you get are
ESC - K1 - K2 - K3 - K4 - K5
Tab - Q - W - E - R - T - Delete
Num - A - S - D - F - Enter
Shift - Z - X - C - V - B
Ctrl + Start/CMD + Alt/Option + Space

Many buttons have dual keys and can switch to either by toggling the Num button. For example Z and X can be switched to [ and ] to adjust brush size.

The chiclet keys are low with good travel and feedback. Doesn't seem like there's backlight.

The dial has been pre-configured to three functions: Zoom, scroll and change brush size.

You can switch between the functions using the switch key just beside the power button.

When you switch functions, an on-screen label will appear to show the active function.

The dial is easy to turn and there are audible clicking sounds when turning.

This keyboard can be used with Windows and MacOS.

Unfortunately the control keys for MacOS are not in the same order as a Mac keyboard. On the KD200, it's Windows configuration Ctrl + Start + Alt order. When used with MacOS, it's Ctrl + CMD + Option. A Mac keyboard has the CMD button beside the spacebar.

If you use MacOS, be prepared for weeks of confusion and pressing the wrong keys before you can get used to the layout.

This is how a Logitech keyboard does it. I use this keyboard for Windows and MacOS. Even after months of using it, sometimes I still press the wrong control buttons.

Hopefully, Huion can actually program the driver to allow for key remap because that would seriously help MacOS users.

The Delete button is the Windows Delete which deletes to the right side. MacOS Delete (Backspace) is to the left. Again, hopefully Huion can add another function to the delete to allow for left side delete – it can be as simple as using the Num button to toggle.

Keys can be held down for continuous adjustments. For example, [ and ] can be held down to increase brush size continuously.

Keys from the KD200 cannot be combined with your keyboard for shortcuts. For example, when you press KD200's Ctrl and your keyboard's G for a Ctrl + G, nothing happens.

There are 5 programmable shortcut buttons K1 to K5. You can set specific keyboard shortcuts, mouse clicks or other functions to them.

The charging port is just above the keypad. Tablet can still be used while charging.

The four large pieces of rubber feet behind the tablet provides good grip on table.

Driver

The drivers I've tested are MacOS driver Driver_15.3.2.523 (4 Feb 2021) and Windows driver Driver_15.2.10.529 (30 Jan 2021).

Pressure curve can be adjusted by move the two square control points.

The two side button on the pen can be customised to any mouse clicks or keyboard shortcut.

The default mapping should work well with 16:9 displays.

You can rotate the orientation of the tablet for left handed use, but the keypad will be upside down. Oops.

To customise the 5 ExpressKeys, you just have to click on each.

For keyboard shortcuts, just enter your own.

Switch allows you to Switch Screen (for dual monitors) or Switch Brush.

Other shortcuts that can be assigned.

Drawing performance

Drawing performance is excellent, consistent and predictable.

The pen is very sensitive. Initial activation force is very minimal. Drawing thin lines is easy. Lines taper gradually, and turn smoothly. The lines always come out exactly the way I expect them to.

Photoshop CC (Mac)

Medibang Paint Pro (Mac)

There are no issues with drawing dots.

Clip Studio Paint (Mac)

Krita (Mac)

Clip Studio Paint (Win)

Tilt sensitivity works great.

Pressure sensitivity does not work with Adobe Illustrator CC (Mac). Workaround is to install Wacom Intuos driver as well.

Pressure and tilt works with Affinity Photo. Pressure works with Affinity Designer.

Android

Android support is bad.

Horizontal drawing area of the tablet is mapped to my Android tablet's vertical orientation.

When my Android tablet is horizontal, drawing area of the tablet is not able to cover the whole Android display.

Huion needs to work on making the tablet more compatible with Android. It should at least map the orientation of the tablet to the orientation of Android, e.g. vertical to vertical, horizontal to horizontal.

Don't get this tablet if you main purpose is to work with Android devices.

Conclusion

The Huion Inspiroy looks good and performs well.

I use MacOS and the main issue I have is just with getting used to the button layout. I really hope Huion can release a driver that allows you to remap the MacOS control buttons. Windows users will find the keyboard layout welcoming.

You really have to study your workflow to see if such a device can is suitable for you. If you already have a wireless keyboard, you could just get a simple wireless tablet such as the Huion Inspiroy Dial Q620M which is US $109 (that's $60 cheaper).

While I appreciate the partial keyboard for extra productivity, I also appreciate having a full keyboard because I do use a lot of keyboard shortcuts.

Oh, if you're left-handed, this is not a product for you. It will be cool if Huion could make the keypad detachable, and make a keypad for left-handed users.

Anyway, if you do decide to get the KeyDial KD200, I'm confident you will be pleased with the look, build quality and performance.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Design looks good
+ Solid build quality
+ Excellent drawing performance
+ Battery-less pen
+ Supports tilt and up to 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity
+ Keys and dial have good feedback
+ Partial keyboard improves productivity
+ 5 ExpressKeys
+ Control dial works great
+ 10x replacement nibs included
+ USB receiver not needed if you use Bluetooth connection
+ 18 hours battery life
+ Tablet can still be used while charging
- Android support is bad
- Order for the MacOS control keys are wrong
- Not for left-handed users.

Availability

Huion online store. That's where you can find the full specs and get the tablet.