Xp-pen G430s Review
Lauren Redder
Please note!
-I am not a Mac or Linux user!! I only tested this tablet on Windows 8 and Windows 10.
-Prices may have changed since I wrote this review.
-Check when a review was written. Some aspects may improve or change over time, so it is in your best interest to concentrate on reviews which are less than 1 year old.
Although the surface of the tablet is quite rough, it is made of a very tough plastic so it does not scratch easily at all. There are no worn out areas even after spending two whole days drawing on it, and I was even being quite heavy-handed with my pen pressure.
The texture of the surface is quite close to the paper-like feeling of the Wacom Intuos, but it is not quite the same as it has a slightly more plastic-y feel to it. However, it does not feel bad to draw on at all.
The pen is called the XP-Pen PN01 and is made of a simple matte plastic with a bulge near the end to catch your fingers. It is a fairly light battery-free pen but it feels quite durable and dependable.
Holding the pen is very comfortable despite the pen being made of all plastic, and it does not feel imbalanced in any way. The buttons protrude from the surface of the pen making it easy to identify and use them without having to glance at your hand.
The new XP-Pen driver is a simple one page driver with all the important settings on just the one window. Here you can set the pen buttons and pen pressure, and choose which monitor the tablet maps to.
You may need to check the Windows Ink checkbox at the bottom left for certain programs such as Photoshop, but most programs will work better with Windows Ink turned off. If you are having problems with a program, try toggling the Windows Ink option.
One thing to note is that there is no built-in cursor delay like what you would have with the similar sized Wacom Intuos or Huion H640P. This means that the cursor will move with your pen with no delay. This is a good thing, however, you will need to use the stabilization tools in your art program or third-party stabilizers like Lazy Nezumi if you do not have a steady hand or draw with quicker motions.
The Click Sensitivity section controls the pen pressure curve of the pen directly. This is the most important section in the tablet settings as you will need to adjust this to reduce how hard you have to press for higher pen pressures to reduce pen nib wear.
The default setting of the graph is a straight diagonal line, but to get a lighter pen pressure setting which is more common, you should move the top dot to around the middle, and move the middle dot somewhere near the top middle as I show in the above pictures. This will give you the feel closest to what you get from most other tablets, and it will also help to drastically reduce pen nib wear, but you should play around with it yourself to find out what suits you best.
The Current Screen section controls which monitor your tablet is mapped to, and what area of your tablet is used. For the best results, pick the monitor you are going to draw on using the drop-down menu at the top, then click the Display Ratio button to match the drawing area of your tablet with the aspect ratio of your monitor.
If you noticed earlier, there was a function called Switch Monitor among the functions you could assign to your pen buttons. That function cycles through all the available monitors in the drop-down list at the top of the Current Screen section when used.
At first, I was a bit taken aback by how hard I had to press the pen to get darker lines, but once I adjusted the pen pressure curve, the stroke control felt extremely good. When doing gradual increases and decreases in pressure, the lines come out completely as expected and there are no skips or jumps in the pressure at all.
Like I mentioned before, because the tablet itself is so thin, you can still draw comfortably even if your hand moves off the tablet, so there should be no problem with the size of the tablet even for people with larger hands.
I could somewhat accept the slow shipping speed because it was around New Years and I was certain that would slow economy shipping. However, I had ordered the Huion H430P from huiontablet.com after New Years and it shipped out on January 4, 2018 using the same China EMS -> Canada Post route as XP-Pen, and guess what? It arrived in just 4 days on January 8, 2018. It arrived a whole week before the XP-Pen AC19 Shortcut Remote which had already been shipped out a week prior!
Hi there, I do not have Adobe Illustrator so I cannot test it for you, but I believe it should be compatible. However, if you are unsure, you should ask XP-Pen directly on Facebook ( ) or by email (ser...@xp-pen.com).
With regards to your question, although their features are slightly different (shortcut keys, wireless), I believe the Deco 01 and 03 have identical drawing capabilities despite having different pens (rubber grip vs plastic pen).
I went ahead and installed the XP-Pen drivers, plugged in my XP-Pen G640, restarted my computer, and opened Medibang Paint. The tablet pen input and pen pressure works exactly as expected as far as I can see.
(As a side note, the 64 vs 63.5 inches size difference does not matter here because you will scale the active area on both tablets to match your screen ratio, and that will shave off the height and make them both the exact same size. Because of this, the difference in size can be ignored when comparing these two tablets.)
One thing I would like to point out though is that you may want to buy the larger XP-Pen Star 03 or Deco 01 instead of the small XP-Pen G640. This is because I have found that it is much more comfortable writing on larger tablets compared to using a smaller tablet like the XP-Pen G640. On a smaller tablet, you often have to zoom in to write small things, whereas on a larger tablet you can stay zoomed out and still write at the same level of detail.
Personally, I would prefer a larger tablet to be able to stay zoomed out while still being able to write small things comfortably. But this is just my opinion without ever having used a tablet to teach classes, so take it with a grain of salt.
Sorry for the late reply.
I do not think it would be comfortable to use the XP-Pen G640 with a 32-inch monitor because the G640 is quite small and so the small motions you do on the G640 will translate to very big motions on your monitor, which will be hard to control.
(If you have ever bought a mouse with customizable DPI, the G640 on a large monitor is like using the mouse at 4000DPI, while a larger tablet on the same monitor would feel more like a mouse at 1600DPI.)
I would suggest a larger tablet for use with your big monitor as it will let you write smaller and more detailed without cramping your hand.
I would suggest the Huion H1060P or XP-Pen Deco Pro S as those are tablets which I have tried and recommend, but you may also want to consider the XP-Pen Deco 01 V2 and Huion H950P if price is an issue.
Nikage,
I really think between this one and Huion HS64 but I think I found a bug in Huion drivers.
When using Microsoft Whiteboard and mapping Right click to one of the pen buttons context menu is shown in the place when I left mouse cursor. Not in the place I have pen cursor.
Do you have such experience ?
Do you know where I can send bug report ?
Assuming they are the same price in your region, personally, I would choose the Huion HS64 because I like its pen more. However, if you have problems with the Huion drivers, then the XP-Pen G640 would be worth a try.
Nice write up! Congratulations! !
I am looking for a tablet which can also be used for writing purpose. Now I am writing on Gboard on my smartphone using a stylus which gets converted into type automatically. But the screen is so small and the writing progresses slowly. Is there any way Google Gboard to be made accessible through this tablet by connecting to my Samsung Galaxy A22 smartphone?