At this point in the "Tablet Debate", the argument about who makes the best tablets for photographers will shift back and forth between Xencelabs and Wacom depending on who you talk too and what deep-down preferences they have. While Wacom may have reigned supreme for a very long time, it's hard to deny that with the launch of the $1,899 Pen Display 24 Studio Series, Xencelabs has officially given Wacom a reason to worry.
Xencelabs has announced the Pen Display 24 Studio Series, a new drawing tablet combined with a display that competes directly with Wacom's Cintiq series.
Let’s start with the technical news, Xencelabs, a Portland, Oregon-based company in the field of digital drawing solutions for creative professionals has had some astounding growth this year. This is not some light news, the company has in fact seen the EMEA market double since 2021. They are basing this on online and offline sales, retail and channel expansion. This is a huge development especially in such a low market, this level of success is really something to be congratulated.
Xencelabs are slashing prices on their world-leading digital drawing solutions for the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. Discounts of up to 30 percent can be had right now on Xencelabs products, including the fantastic new Pen Tablet Medium Bundle SE.
Xencelabs has announced the Pen Tablet Small that joins the Medium as the company expands its product line.
What do you get when you take a bunch of former Wacom employees, start a new company, and give them carte blanche to develop a brand new pen tablet? What you get is Xencelabs, a new player in graphics that is bringing some much-needed innovation to a stale market. This is no cheap knock-off we're talking about, Xencelabs' new Pen Tablet Medium just put Wacom on notice.
Newcomer Xencelabs has announced a new pen tablet that aims to meld affordable pricing and excellent user experience into one device. The Xencelabs tablet is devoid of unnecessary buttons but gives the option to add-on a multi-function remote accessory with 40 customizable shortcuts per application.
Since using my first pen tablet over a decade ago, I found that working with display tablets provided an extra level of precision to my work since I could see exactly where my pen strokes were connecting on the screen. This let me be more precise and creative with my edits, but most of these tablets were either incredibly expensive or overly large. The $1,099 Huion Kamvas Pro 19 solves both these problems.
Anyone who has worked with large display tablets will know that comfortably positioning and using them in a workspace can be challenging. Unless you are lucky enough to have a massive desk with a ton of space, most users will reposition these devices every time they use them. This is why having a proper stand for your display tablet is critical and why the Xoot_Pro Pen Display Stand is so helpful.
I think one of my favorite things about the current state of the display tablet industry is how there seems to be a non-stop growth of affordable alternatives to the historic "major players" in the game, making it easier and much more justifiable for photographers to make the leap into not just using a pen tablet, but a large and color accurate display version suitable for proper photo editing.
There's no denying that in the last few years, we've seen a veritable explosion of pen and display tablets from competing companies. At this stage in the competitive game, the hardest part for creatives has been figuring out what makes one tablet better or different than another at each budget level.
Pen display tablets have been getting better and more affordable, so it makes sense that all-in-one devices like the Huion Kamvas Studio 16 would follow the same path. But what makes this device a little different is it's a pro pen tablet made for designers, illustrators, and photographers to help them get their art created quickly and easily while also being a fully functional Windows PC.
The DJI Inspire 3 is a drone that I had actually given up hope on ever seeing. The Inspire 2 was released way back in 2016 (the hot camera that year was the Nikon D500, to give you some perspective), and progress with UAVs has been incredibly rapid since then.
There are now tons of pen tablet makers out there and the options have given new users far more power to choose from a wide variety of styles, features, and obviously prices. The new $40 Veikk Voila L gives beginners an impressively competent "bare-bones" pen tablet to learn on for scant little investment.
Anyone who has spent any extended time editing photos with a mouse will find that often, it's just not the best experience. That's why so many editors switch to a drawing tablet (also known as a pen tablet), but picking the best one has gotten surprisingly challenging in recent years.
Huion says its new $160 Inspiroy Dial 2 (Q630M) pen tablet is designed to enhance and improve every feature from the previous tablet and "boost efficiency of creatives to the next level." I think the company achieved that goal.
Using Photoshop to remove the background in an image so that you can replace it is one of the most frequent things for which it was used, and might still be. The actual placing of a new image for a background is relatively easy. The heavy lifting comes from making a good selection of your subject as this will be used to remove the unwanted background for replacement.
When it comes to precision and professional image editing, nearly every working retoucher will tell you that a pen tablet is an absolute must-have tool, yet the entry cost of these tools can be a deterrent. Thankfully there are several entry-level tablets like the Veikk VK1060 that offer some professional-level features without breaking the bank.
The Kamvas Pro 24 (4K) is Huion's flagship pen display: a high-resolution graphics display that delivers most of the benefits of a Wacom Cintiq Pro 24 at about half the price. In the two months I've spent using it on-and-off in preparation for this review, I've come to three important conclusions: (1) this is an excellent product, (2) a large 4K pen display is the best way to edit your photos, and (3) I can't realistically use this display as my daily driver.
The TourBox Elite has been the subject of a lot of attention since the launch of its Kickstarter and with the crowdfunding campaign coming to a close, we decided to take a closer look at it to see if it's worth your backing.
XP-Pen's new Artist Pro 16 is one of the most compelling entry-level graphics displays on the market. It's lightweight, well-built, highly customizable, color-accurate, and all for a price that will make Wacom owners blush. It's not a perfect product, but no other Full HD pen display on the market offers this kind of experience and build quality for just $450.