I was searching for a used, simple, small pen tablet on ebay. Found a new Inspiroy H580X for 39€ including shipping directly offered by Huion. That was cheaper than some of the used offers.
Even though it is an older tech model with PW100 pen it works astonishing well (testet with Krita 5.2.9, 5.3 on Windows 10, all set to Windows Ink). Pressure response it good and tilt works. I did not have issues with installing and setting up the driver. All buttons on the pen and the tablet work as expected.
The tablet has a small active area 203,2 x 127 mm (8 x 5 inch) which I thought might be to small. To my surprise it works quite well for me in conjunction with the 15.6 inch notebook display (1920x1080).
Good to hear! In my experience, you can just get unlucky with the pen. I used to have H950P and the pen worked really well, despite being a low-end model (the main issue was with a pretty slippery tablet surface). Then in passing I was using Kamvas 16 and its pen was actually pretty bad. I think it was just this one specific unit that was faulty, but the pressure response was pretty terrible.
As for the tablet size, absolutely, it depends on your screen. I prefer large tablets, but you can actually feel hand fatigue with them sometimes, and it’s hard to make straight lines because you need to maintain stability over a longer distance. But with a large desktop monitor, they tend to be better (my monitor is 28 inch, so…), and you can always reduce the active area too.
A medium (A5 or a bit bigger) active area tablet is probably the sweet spot for most users. Or a display tablet, of course, but that’s a whole other thing
it’s surprising - when watching some of the popular youtube channels, the “influencers” are telling us how good the most expensive tablets and pens are (of course from the most expensive brand). And then I buy one of the cheapest tablets, attach it to a 10 years old notebook, start Krita and it works well.
Little test - and the result is:
my ability to control my hand pressure and to draw smooth lines is the limiting factor, not the tablet
This is the perfect proof that tapering lines via the ability to control your pen, through the pressure applied on the tablet surface, is very possible. One just has to set up the tablet and pen correctly and needs a little practice!
Only the attitude: “This never works!”, will never make someone doing such strokes, because the one doesn’t want to …
I’m not sure which influencers you had in mind, but I have a few trusted reviewers, and I don’t sense any dishonesty from them. I especially like Teoh on Tech and SevenPens, but there are a few other great channels.
Although the skill and the mastery of a specific device plays the biggest role, it’s also true that there ARE significant differences between devices. I used several tablets and it’s undeniable. For example:
pen quality: Wacom Pro Pen 2 is significantly better than Huion PW550 and older pens
tablet surface quality: Intuos Pro 2017 feels similar to Huion Giano, but both much better than Huion H910P
And so on. Also, in my experience, some aspects of the device are superior, but other may be worse, like the drivers. And then there’s the question of whether it is worth it to pay the premium, and it depends, but there’s a strong case for “not really”
I trust that there are differences but let me put my experience into context.
I saw one video from sevenpens where he said Huion pens (including the higher end ones) have a not so good pressure response compared to the wacom ones (the later revision PW550 line is better though he said). He also said a good pressure response should be like the wacom one.
I can’t judge that statement as I am just doodling from time to time and am not a pro painting artist.
But I needed an affordable pen tablet to plug into my notebook. I use it while watching TV shows and doodling while doing so (the sphere and the “little fellows” I posted were done like that).
I didn’t wanted to invest much money because it was not intended for “real work” (I have a desktop PC for that).
So I thought, just try the cheapest used pen tablet you can find on ebay. To my surprise I found this brand new one.
My expectation was that it will be horribly bad:
instable wobbly build
driver problems
bad pen feeling
non working pen and tablet buttons
usb cable not included or super short
as predicted by sevenpens a bad pressure experience
But none of that happened.
The build is simple plastic but stable and sturdy - no bending of the device while holding it.
The surface has some roughness to it. So the pen gets some grip (but it is still more slippery than a real pencil on real paper).
The pen just works. The buttons have a clearly defined click point and don’t feel wobbly to me.
Driver just worked. I use Windows Ink with Krita and have no issues.
And most important the pressure response works:
I used the tablet for maybe 10 hours over the last weeks and am able to “somehow” draw tapered strokes. I am not very good at that but, like I wrote previously, this is not caused by the tablet but by my limited practice.
This is just about expection vs. experience.
The expection based on sevenpens’ and others’ youtube channels:
Wacom gives you good pressure response and others not so much (my simplified summery).
My experience:
Even this super cheap non Wacom tablet gives me usable pressure response. I don’t know if it is perfect but definately usable for me and much better than I expected.
Side note:
All my pen / tablet driver and Krita input main curves are linear. For me they worked out ot fhe box like that.
My brush presets are mostly also linear
Side note 2:
You wrote:
That’s interesting if I compare that with an information from sevenpens.
In the video he says that the PW550’s pressure response is very different than that of the older PW517 and much more like the one of wacom. But I a not sure if you refer specifically to pressure.
The thing with pens is that they have a fair bit of randomness. You can get a very good old generation pen, or a poor new generation pen. I have several Huion pens, as that was my preferred brand before I switched to Intuos Pro (specifically, not all Wacom tablets are good).
One of my PW517 pens broke, the other works pretty well and is very similar to my PW550. However, my PW550S (slim) feels better than my PW550. Still, Pro Pen 2 (I have two units) is even better still than any Huion pen I own.
When talking about pen quality, I mainly refer to pressure sensitivity and tilt stability. Especially tilt is bad on Huion, at least compared to Wacom. In terms of anything else, like pen tracking, it’s excellent on both brands.
Another important point is that new (latest tech) low-end tablets are actually really good. For example, Inspiroy 2M (aka H951P) feels much better than the slippery H950P. The pen is even cheaper than the older PW517, yet works remarkably well in my experience too (I used this tablet very briefly).
I absolutely agree with you regarding the value proposition. There’s almost never a need to shell out for Wacom. In fact, I’d go back to my Huion if only they offered pen tablets with PW600 pens, which I expect are just as good as Wacom’s Pro Pen 2. Sadly, they’ve been prioritizing pen displays and I’m not the target audience.
Got it.
While you mentioned tilt - I did not test much in that regard. Drawing a consistent line at different tilt angles is an even greater challenge for me than tapering a stroke
Yeah, it does. Honestly, while there are differences, they are rather miniscule, to the extent that they may not even be noticeable depending on the use case. As always, the best thing is to have some hands-on time with the devices and decide if it’s worth it for you.
