Are Tablets Good For Drawing
Ailene Goldhirsh
Broadly speaking, there are three main types of drawing tablet. Each takes a different approach to the central challenge of helping you create digital art and draw on your Windows PC or Mac, as if you were drawing on paper.
Yes, there's a growing market of drawing tablets for children, and you can check out our dedicated drawing tablets for kids guide if this is something you're looking for. These have been designed to be easy to use and indestructible.
More drawing tablet brands are now enabling drawing tablets to be connected to smartphones, Android devices and use Linux. These are often smaller than standard drawing tablets and can fit neatly into a bag, as well as using USB-C to USB-C cables. My three best drawing tablets for smartphones and mobiles would be:
Android, Windows and iOS devices like the Surface Pro and iPad Pro take on the other drawing tablets in two ways. You don't need another computer: just download an art app and start drawing with your fingertip or a stylus. Also, when you want to use the Creative Cloud suite on your main computer, these can function as graphics tablets with apps like Astropad.
As for how good they are for drawing, well, it depends on what you need. The iPad has incredible software like Procreate and the very capable Apple Pencil 2 offers some pretty impressive features and specs, but it's very expensive. The Surface Pro range is better suited for sketching and doodling, but at a push could handle some more detailed art if you're willing to work for it.
UPDATE: Xencelabs recently launched its new larger Pen Display 16, which could eventually make it into my list below. My review is ongoing (I like to use these for weeks to test them properly) but you can read my first impressions in my Xencelabs Pen Display 16 hands-on.
Being able to replicate the feel of using a pencil on paper to interact with a screen is crucial for many jobs, and the best drawing tablets enable this unique interaction perfectly for digital artists and other creatives.
Our reviewer concluded that this tablet is well priced, offering tremendous value for money, and it's one I use too. With excellent accuracy, solid build quality, and two types of pen stylus, this is my favourite overall drawing tablet. There's also a cheaper, Xencelabs Small bundle that I love too.
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Wacom is a brand name that delivers quality and the reliable Intuos Pro range ticks all the boxes, including a responsive stylus, great build quality and solid support for all leading digital art apps. Overall I prefer the Xenclabs Medium, but if you want a larger drawing tablet this is a great runner up.
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The XPPen Deco drawing tablet is a good option for beginners as it's both affordable but comes with the XPPen accuracy and quality of the more expensive tablets. Coming in a choice of colours, this is also a fun tablet to play around with, and can be connected to mobiles as well as laptops for mobile work and art creation.
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Our reviewer fell in love with this pen display, which is our top pick for keen digital artists and professionals. Work on the big display looks fantastic, and drawing feels great. This has unique design ideas, like the wide bezel for ease of use and adjustable stylus holder that can be placed anywhere. (For less, you can opt for the new, smaller Xencelabs Pen Display 16.)
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The full HD screen may not be the flashiest in terms of pixels, but it more than does the job. And since this isn't the newest Wacom tablet on the block, it can be surprisingly affordable whilst offering great features. If you want all the reliability and compatibility that comes with Wacom, this is the one for you.
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The new XPPen Artist Pro 16 (Gen 2) offers lots for less, including a 16K pressure sensitive stylus, a good display, an excellent quick key remote similar to the Xencelabs models, and built-in stand. It's well-made and in my review performed excellently, which for the price is unrivalled.
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The new iPad M4 Pro could be considered overpowered, but if you want a future-proof tablet computer for digital art (and more) this is the one. Slim, lightweight and with a striking OLED screen, and compatible with Apple Pencil Pro, this will last you years and support new intensive art apps and 3D sculpt apps as they release.
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The Wacom MobileStudio Pro 16 is a Windows OS powerhouse, with a dedicated NVIDIA Quadro graphics card, Intel i7 CPU and 16GB RAM. It is heavy, and not so portable as an iPad Pro, but it's larger and runs full software, from Photoshop to Houdini and ZBrush. I've been using mine for nearly eight years, these things last.
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The new XPPen Magic Pad is a the best budget pen computer I've used. Rather than a tablet you can use for drawing, this is a drawing tablet designed for artists. It features a stylus with 16K levels of pressure and a flexible, anti-glare etched display that's ideal for digital art and feels closer to a desktop drawing tablet than the stiffness and gloss of an iPad Pro.
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Wacom user here since over 20 years. Usually using the small cheap and officially unsupported Graphire 3 that I bought about 15 years ago, with hacked drivers on a brand new MacBook Air M2. It works well enough to be useful. But heck, even my A5 Intuos 1 which I bought in 2000 still works as well!
Since I'm using mostly the MacBook trackpad otherwise, it's also important to enable as many multi-finger gestures as one can handle and occasionally switch hands, e.g. for simple scrolling. That all helps a lot.
I stopped using mice since I bought my first Wacom.
Still using my faithful Wacom Intuos4 Medium here.
Got it not long after the 4 came out years back and it's still going strong.
Best features; The Touch Wheal, the infinite number of on-screen key shortcuts you can set and that all the programmable functions and key shortcuts you can make are done on a per app basis. Switch between apps and the tablet automatically switches to the specific setup you made for that app.
And all your customisation preferences can be exported as a backup file, just in case.
Should it ever die I would by another without hesitation.
Yeah, the lack of official support for older Wacom products has annoyed me as well, until I found about -driver-fix. I also happily donated a couple of bucks to the guy for all his work, as he actually saved me quite some money in that I didn't have to buy a new tablet (regardless if it would have been a Wacom or another brand).
I've used Wacom tablets for decades, but switched to a Xence tablet last year. I've been using the 'Medium Bundle' with my MacBook Pro (Adobe, Affinity) along with a 12" iPad Pro (which has become my main illustration workstation with Procreate, Fresco, and Designer) and haven't really missed my older Wacoms (Intuos and Cintiq) at all.
Another yet unmentioned option is the iPad.
I have Affinity v2 installed on our family iPad 8th gen with an Apple Pencil 1. It works great in fact, although I've never used it for any serious project yet. Also, the iPad can serve as an external display with current Macs and MacOS. But I've only briefly tested all this because the iPad is running on my wife's Apple ID, so the Affinity document exchange with my Mac account is a bit complicated, and fully pairing the iPad with the Mac also works only when logged in with my wife's account.
For from ideal for sketching but for mitigating my RSI problems I long ago switched to a Kensington Expert Mouse, a trackball with a scroll ring. Not cheap but built to last forever -- I have been using mine for well over a decade & it is as solid as the day I bought it.
I have an old trust one that was never amazing but it won't work on w10 and I don't have the time to go through .inf files trying to fix them at the minute! So I might just give the wacom graphite 3 a try as it's only about 20 second hand on ebay if the drivers are already there for me! ? I don't mind paying for a name but I've seen the new wacoms for about 1100+ lol. It'd just be overkill for someone who mostly just vectorises flat images and uses the fine selection tool. It would be neat to have a little screen on my lap though I guess which is why I am considering the XP-PEN Artist as its relatively cheap and seems to offer a lot!
Nice, I have looked at their website and they do seem good quality. The small one is 129 For that kind of price though I may just try out that XP-PEN Artist12 @ 149 (on amazon) as you get a nice built-in medium sized screen to comfortable gaze at while you work. My only wonder though, is how accurate is the nib to pixel ratio going to be? I do fine selection cutting out hair and stuff like that sometimes so it would need to be quite sensitive!
Yes that's kind of where I'm coming from. It's not so much about being fancy, it's about comfort and accuracy above all else. There's no point getting something that has a rough DPI rating because a lot of what I do requires long tedius fine and careful selection. I like your idea but don't think I could get used to that mouse you've linked. The mouse pen is interesting though cheers! Holding a pen is a bit like riding a bike again, it's second nature. So thinking a tablet and/or pen is where I'm leaning towards.
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