Suggestions asked for second hand laptops with digitizers

Support and Advice General Questions
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Hi all,

I am new to the forum, and newly in the market for a (second hand) laptop that has a built in digitizer.

It is for my daughter who likes to draw a lot; mostly HB on paper, now and again in colour, sometimes digital. For her (elderly) laptop she got an Intuos 3, and sometimes she uses my Lenovo x201t (also with Wacom EMR). “Long ago” she switched from Mypaint to Krita.

Her laptop is barely performant enough to listen music and run Krita, and the replacement battery won’t run her to a class at school. The x201t is about the newest laptop in the house, so I got behind with current stylus/painting options.

It seems EMR digitizers are out for ‘mainstream’ laptops, and that it will be a capacitive screen and a stylus with a active electronics, the choice being:

  • Ntrig/Microsoft, various versions; included in HP, Acer and Microsoft hardware (and previously Dell?)
  • Wacom AES 1; included in Lenovo (probably others as well?)
  • Wacom AES 2: included in Lenovo (and newer Dell?)

Is that correct, so far?

From reading, I know Ntrig is good on paper (pressure levels, tilt), but actual experience lags specifications. I recall reading Wacom AES 2 adds tilt besides higher resolution lines and pressure levels (but only Dell mentions tilt, I can’t find it back in Lenovo documentation).

With our older Wacom experience, I’d value tilt over excessive pressure levels, but either way, Wacom AES 2 seems the best option.

On the laptop side of things, I am quite picky, but relatively mainstream as well:

  • CPU would probably not matter the world, once it is i5 fifth generation or newer;
  • 8 GB of RAM,preferably extensible;
  • SSD for storage; 128 GB is smallish, 256 would do;
  • ‘full HD’ as resolution
  • The optimal size to me would seem ~13". Smaller makes display elements quite tiny. The 14" options seem somewhat largish in tablet mode, how do you feel?

Lenovo’s Yoga lines look good, and Dell’s 2-in-1 Lattitudes as well, though the latter is not so clear on whether a stylus is supported or not.

Here in the Netherlands a second hand Yoga 360 is about spot on in budget; L390 (quite) a bit above, a Yoga 2 ‘affordable’. On the Dell side I have no idea which laptops support active pens, and what their prices are. I noticed the stylus itself is often ‘optionally’, so which stylus would be the next (or first?) choice.

Thank you for reading thus far. I hope not to have bored you, and would like to ask for suggestions on which laptop to look for, and in that laptop, if possible, what strong and weak points are.

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I agree with your specification and conclusions except I wouldn’t go for anything less than 16 GB now.

And I’d like to warn you about Wacom’s Cintiq Companion line. It’s not made to be taken apart, so no access to battery, memory expansion etc.

I bought a Cintiq Companion some years ago, thinking that I could bring it along and draw anywhere. But it turns out I couldn’t be bothered lugging a pretty heavy thing around, especially as the power brick needed to come along too since the battery would inevitably run out.

Does she really need a laptop at school? If I bought something for myself today I’d buy a stationary computer at home and maybe a Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+ or something like it to bring along when I’m out and about.

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I’ll be naughty and ping @wolthera and @tiar :slight_smile:
If I’m not totally mistaken they both do/did a fair amount of painting on Yogas, and have worked with some MS Surface models too, so I guess they can give you some feedback.

But I remember complaints that wobbling (so straight lights being wavy) is still pretty bad on Yogas, and the Surface apparently only gets used for development/testing purpose really.

Android devices like Galaxy Tab may become a real alternative now, although Krita on Android is still not as mature as on dekstop OSes, still needs Neon optimization, and a tablet with more than 4GB RAM costs a bunch. But I’ve seen some impressive artwork here lately done on Android.

Lastly, small display tablets like Wacom One, XP Pen Artist or Huion Kamvas with 12" or 13.3" became more affordable too (and are on Christmas sale right now).
I haven’t read (real) reviews about the 2nd Generation Artist 12 yet, it looks rather slim, unfortunately they don’t mention the weight anywhere :frowning:
Huion’s smallest weighs 763g, the Wacom One 1kg, which is quite a lot.
They advertise Android (only specific devices) support too, but it seems that will need a power plug, so not really that mobile, which makes the question if Krita support that rather secondary…

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Thanks both for your input!

That would have my preference. Online advertisements are mostly ‘standard’ models, without memory upgrades, so a second hand model that came by default with 16 GB new, is often quite a bit more expensive than a generation older that came with 8 GB by default (but might be upgradeable, more and more an exception these days)

Thanks! I have been eying those, coming in the range of ‘affordable’ (though lacking usability as general purpose machine).

Perhaps later on. Old-fashioned as I am, I can’t find my way around on Android and get terribly frustrated using or supporting the use of them. Besides that it would put further budget constraints on each of the devices. Finally, seeing the timeshare between her current laptop and her telephone, I suspect the desktop would see little use and increased use of the less-than-ergonomic tablet ;-).

Thanks :slight_smile:

That goes for the AES 2 equipped devices as well? That’s a bummer.

In other respects they may become less of an alternative: more and more manufacturers seem to close their boot loaders and prevent people from using firmwares based on AOSP, let alone running a ‘standard’ Linux distro.
That aside, can you recommend capacitative pens either on Android or on Linux?

These are very nice, but more of an Intuos-replacement than as workstation, are they not? Maybe later, in combination with the desktop at home + tablet on the road advice :wink:

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I was not in a hurry, but now I found a Lenovo Yoga C930 within budget.

It is the version with the 1920*1080 screen, 16 GB of soldered on RAM, 8th gen i7. As far as ‘work/school’ concerned, enough for the foreseeable future.

General reviews, at the time, seem OK. Graphics specific reviews are more difficult to find, especially if they also have to touch use under Linux.

Anyone using it for drawing? Feedback on stylus performance, colour reproduction, Linux compatibility?

- edit -
I hesitated too long, while filling out the order form, it was sold in the physical store.

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Hi all,

After some deliberation I bought an as-new second hand Lenovo Yoga 7 14i.

Drawbacks:

  • somewhat over budget
  • glossy screen
  • unknown (by Lenovo telephonic sales as well as tech support) touch screen technology

Good points:

  • it is a very nicely built machine
  • it is faster than any computer I’ve laid my hands on

Lenovo could not only not tell me which digitizer technology is used, they could also not tell which pens are compatible and whether they support tilt. Supposedly 4096 pressure levels are supported, which implies Wacom AES 2, but on another forum I read that manufacturers have to request separate options to be enabled by Wacom.

Debian (testing) installed without a problem, though the speakers needed additional firmware to make noise. It comes with Krita 4.8 in the repositories, for the time being. Perhaps I’ll replace it with an appimage if it stays at 4.x.

Unfortunately, but not totally unexpected, the screen/stylus combination comes with the AES-wobble on diagonal lines. Work around is to rotate the canvas, or draw very fast :stuck_out_tongue:

All in all, I think it is a nice package. She still got the Intuos 3 for more precise work with this much more cabable laptop, so either way it is a jump ahead.

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Sorry for being Off-Topic! :pray:

So it is perfect suited for speed-painting purposes! :rofl:

Michelist

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