XP-Pen tablet Deco Pro S & Pen Display Artist 12 Pro

In recent years, Huion and XP-Pen have notably risen up to be some real rivals for Wacom. Although Wacom still has the most sensitive and stable stylus sensing technology, both Huion and XP-Pen   provide alternatives with some very high cost-to-performance  ratios.  Today, let's take a look at a few of XP-Pen's offerings, namely the pen display Artist 12 Pro ​ and pen tablet Deco Pro S.

Artist 12 Pro

The Artist 12 Pro is a pen display of very high cost-to-performance ratio at US$300.  The only bad thing about it is its inability to sense tilt within one inch from the screen edges.

The most distinct feature of the Artist Pro series is their Red Dials. We demo the use of the Red dial for changing loading colors, lie Hue, Saturation, Lightness in real-time as we stroke:

It's mesmerizing and soothing just  to play with such a nice watercolor simulation in our Expresii app, when you can even change the paint or brush attributes as you stroke!     We did a   Siamese Cat demo  with it,  and  here's a complete process of it:

It's amazing when you see such an organic watercolor simulation and you can stroke on the 11.6" Full-HD screen directly!    We of course wished the display is of even higher resolution so that the watercolor would appears even more crisp and impressive. The tilt sensing is less stable than Wacom's and we still feel that Wacom's is still better at sensing the smallest pressure.

The pen display doesn't support multi-touch input, but there's a work around using a smartphone as the multi-touch device via the app DroidMote:

As of today, the only pen displays that also support multi-touch are those expensive 24"+ Cintiq models from Wacom. Or, you can of course use tablet PC's like the Surface Pro, or other 2-in-1 offerings from e.g. Lenovo, ASUS, Samsung, etc.

Deco Pro S

The Deco Pro S was provided by our local XP-Pen distributor (Thanks!).   The device feels quite premium. We specially like the matte finish on the drawing surface.  The USB type-C connector lets you plug in easily. 

Unfortunately, this device still  doesn't sense the pen tilt  when the pen is within 1" from the four edges of the sensing area. People setting of to buy XP-Pen devices need to take note of this issue. Other than that, the sensing is not bad and is certainly good enough for many users. 

XP-Pen advertises this Deco Pro series as Red-Dot Award winning for their designs. However, we are disappointed when we found that both the physical and virtual wheels can not be used to adjust values as you stroke.  We thought it'd be great when we finally have more wheel controls for real-time adjustment, but no, they can only be used when you're not stroking.  Note that the Artist 12 Pro does allow real-time adjustment via the Red Dial. If it's just a software issue, I hope XP-PEN can change their driver to allow that happen on their dual wheel models too.

Pen Issues and how we fixed them

It's inevitable that sooner or later users would accidentally drop their pens. We found that XP-Pen's stylii seem to be quite prone to issues after dropping. At least  for those pen models that come with the Artist Pro and Dec Pro series. One can find frequent complains from users looking for help with their pens exhibiting various issues e.g. at Reddit. The good news is, we found a way to fix those issues by adjusting a knob inside the pen, and here's how: 

If you would like to try it yourself too, please note that you're on your own risk and we're not responsible for any damage that it may cause.   ;-)

Conclusion

Given the much lower prices then Wacom's, these XP-PEN devices are surely worth considering.  However, don't forget the offers from Huion. The Huion Kamvas 13 is only US$240, even 60 dollars cheaper than the smaller Artist 12 Pro. We have yet to try the   Kamvas 13  ourselves to tell you exactly if the sensing is  better than XP-Pen's.