It has been one year since the Microsoft Surface Pro 7 was released.   We got ourselves an i7 model to test with. We've had it for about a month now and it has been very responsive.

The following is a quick test on its performance. As you can see, it allows fluid digital watercolor in Expresii. In case you can't afford the i7 model, you can still get by with the i5 model, but  you may want to use the   Fast Mode   for more responsiveness.

Did some calligraphy test too:

Don't have the original Surface Pen with us right now, so we picked up a Surface Pen alternative in these tests. 

Finally  we'd like to show you some sneak peek at some latest development in   ink-painting-style animation (水墨動畫) that we are working on.   Follow our animator collaborator's Instagram  to learn more. Their work is so cool & cute at the same time!

​And yes, Surface Pro is used in producing this animation, in case you wonder.   ​​(・ωｰ)～☆

Perhaps  the highlight of the Lenovo Yoga Duet 7i is its support for the brand new Lenovo E-Color Pen.  Among all the pressure-sensitive styli for iPads, Windows or Android devices, the   Lenovo E-Color Pen is the first that can capture colors from the real world.  Recently, the Apple Pencil was rumored to add such a feature given they filed a related patent application. However, It's not likely Apple would be granted such a patent, as suggested by Jeremy Shu, CEO of Ufro Inc, the company that provides the color capture technology in the   E-Color Pen . 

The Lenovo E-Color Pen is a rechargeable Wacom AES pen. Its USB-C charging port is hidden behind the color capture module, which unplugs from the top of the pen.  The pen is pressure sensitive and drives the cursor when hovering. It doesn't support  tilt sensing, but you can use one of the two side buttons to adjust brush tilt in Expresii. 

​The pen is not magnetic like the Surface Pen, so you can't just stick it to the side of the tablet. Previously Lenovo supplies  holder for their active pens that plugs into USB-A ports of the tablets, but now they switched to USB-C for the Yoga Duet 7i so you will need to find another solution if you want to keep it attached e.g. this pen sleeve  on Amazon, or the same thing on TMall of China for half the price. 

Currently our app Expresii is one of the select apps that natively support the E-Color Pen color capture function.  Its watercolor simulation is a good reason  for anyone to use it for showing the capture capability beautifully.  When you pick a yellow and a cyan from the real world, the virtual paint mixes together to give a nice green and Expresii's watercolor flow further mingles the paint with gorgeous flow patterns in very high resolution.  Expresii supports Ufro's   Mozbii pen since 2018  and we thank Wacom for linking us up leading to   hardware and software innovations working well together.

The following is a video showing general color picking  and the use of the pen for Eastern calligraphy on the Yoga Duet 7i. The machine used in the i5 model, but it's already fast enough for using Expresii. There's the i7 option that gives even better performance for you to choose from.

I came from the Surface Pro family, and I really prefer the keyboard of the Duet 7i being able to operate via bluetooth when detached. It's good that Lenovo is including both the keyboard and the E-Color pen, at least in the markets of Hong Kong and the Philippines, instead of needing customers to   fork out    another   USD 90 to 160 for a keyboard cover  and   USD 99 for the official Surface Pen.  There're cheaper aftermarket alternatives for both items (like these pen alternatives), but consumers need to shop around separately. The Yoga Duet 7i is called Yoga Duet 2020    in the Chinese market, and a normal Active pen instead of the E-Color Pen is included.

Expresii  receives colors from Color King, the proxy software that sends the captured colors to supported apps.  Our Expresii not only can directly receive colors from Color King, but it also offers you the option to auto-load single or multiple-colors into the virtual brush. This is a unique feature made possible by the native support for multi-color loading in Expresii.   As demonstrated in the above video, you could pick a few colors in sequence to make a gradient in the brush. You then can make strokes with such a gradient for even more interesting marks!

We  further demo coloring a piece of ink work using the E-Color Pen.   In this demo, we celebrate  brush stroke economy. We appreciate watercolor having a life of its own. From the thumbnail, you may not be able to appreciate the simulation quality so we urge you to watch the video:

The following video shows the performance of color capture and making strokes on the i5 version of the Yoga Duet 7i.  The color transfer can be immediate. In the above videos, most of the clips are played back at 2x speed up for editing purpose. The following video shows you the performance in real time.

​Our app uses GPU for rendering and flow simulation, so it's often the GPU being the bottleneck.  If you find it too slow on your machine, we can still enable Quick Stroke Mode (Fast Mode), and Expresii would be more responsive as you stroke. If you're on Win10, it's easy to download this Store Demo version of Expresii for you to test out the performance.

How accurate is the color capture? I'd say pretty accurate, as you can see from our demo videos. I tried picking the neon   orange from my sport shirt and the color captured was obviously off. But other than difficult situations like that, it's pretty accurate for the most part.

We appreciate   the startup   Ufro Inc   bringing low-cost color capture tech to the masses. Color sampling devices used to be rather expansive, and only specialized  people would buy them. FYI, you can also order Ufro's standalone color picker InstaPick for as low as USD 60.   We also appreciate   Wacom and   Lenovo for adopting the innovation.

We hope that the Lenovo E-Color Pen would be supported on future pen-enabled machines from Lenovo.  They just announced  the Yoga 9i, which uses Intel’s new and much improved Intel Xe integrated graphics of the 11th Gen CPU. We also wish Lenovo would opt for tilt sensing for their coming pen models. The future looks bright for creative professionals!

Microsoft has released the $145 Slim Surface Pen, which is rechargeable.  This new pen lets you forget about finding AAAA battery for your stylus but is  quite   expensive.    BTW, you can actually buy   rechargeable AAAA batteries  to be more  environmentally-friendly and be able to just swap drained battery out    for continual pen use. 

Last year, we reviewed a few Surface Pen alternatives that are tilt-sensitive but still  use AAAA batteries. Today we review two alternatives that are rechargeable and tilt-sensitive, namely the   IQS INK Pro  (bought it at RMB171 or $24 when there's discount from Taobao) and the  Heiyo Gioia    ($46 at Amazon).  We believe the INK Pro   is the same as this   Renaisser    Raphael 520   ($36),   Ciscle  ($40-44) or   Uogic  ($40) that are available on Amazon.  This is later confirmed by    Renaisser, who contacted us soon after our first draft of this review is posted online. There's also a sibling of the Heiyo Gioia branded as LACORAMO  ($46) at Amazon. We asked Heiyo about this, and they replied they were 'involved in the design' of this LACORAMO, and agree that it is not much different as long as drawing performance goes so we would skip   this LACORAMO pen in this review.

See our unboxing video for the Raphael 520 / Ink Pro and the Heiyo Gioia:

And our main review video that shows you line and curve tests and more:

The INK Pro (Raphael 520) is really light at only 14g.  Manual says "charge for 40 minutes and use for about 12 hours".  In practice, we found the battery lasts long enough that we don't really need to charge it often.

We are really happy that this pen can attach  to Surface devices   magnetic ally just like the original Surface pen. In general, this pen senses pressure and tilt very well, although in our experiment, the previous IQS pen we reviewed is still the best in light pressure sensing being able to give tapered stroke endings. Another small thing  that keeps the Raphael being perfect is that tilt is not sensed when the eraser button is pressed.   We've informed the maker and hopefully they can fix this in their next model. But anyway, this is not a big deal since we can always use keyboard shortcut 'E' to toggle eraser mode, which may even be a preferred way to do it since it's more stressful to hold a barrel button as you stroke.

All the 3 nibs  included in the package are of the same plastic material, as opposed to the rubbery tip that the origin Surface Pen has. It claims 150 hours continuous use and max. 230 days standby.  charge time is 4 hour at  5v 1A.  The User Manual says its stylus tips are    POM   (polyoxymethylene) and are "anti-friction".   In practice, we find the nibs to be quite slippery.   Included are two tall and two short  nibs in total.  We found the tall and short nibs to behave basically the same. 

The Heiyo also senses pressure and tilt quite well.   However, it feels a bit clunky to use in comparison with the Raphael.  This is partly due to the bigger size and partly the center of mass is well above the middle point of the pen body.  Shifting the point of holding toward to pen top would help, but then thew barrel buttons may be a bit far from reach of your thumb.

One point to note is that both Raphael and   Heiyo  go to sleep and you need to press their button to wake them up.   We found it  a bit annoying at first, since we are used to the original Surface Pen that is 'always on'.   But we get used to always pressing a button before stroking with these new pens now. ​

 We saw one Surface Pen alternative from Taobao that resemble a pencil and has this interesting magnetic charging port of the pen so that you can just snap it away when you need to charge your pen.  Unfortunately, it doesn't support tilt so we pass on that option.

However, we still fancy a magnetically charged Surface Pen, so we try to pair our pens with  Magnetic USB Charging Cable. The particular cables we bought are data cables, as opposed to power only. There're also round and flat types of such cables. We chose a round type, thinking it should match the pen bodies well. However, the flat side of the Raphael has the magnetic head extrudes a little bit, which would hit the Surface device when you snap it to the device.  Our solution is to wrap flat rubber bands to the two ends of the pen as cushion. Even without the magnetic head,  I think it's still good to have rubber bands   since the top part of the Raphael is metal and over time, that may also scratch your Surface device.  

They work well, as long as charging goes. However, the magnetic bud, which  is only 0.5g, adds  weight to the very top of the Raphael 520 pen, shifting the balance towards the top. With the bud attached, I have to hold the pen further up to maintain balance.  

It's okay to leave both the Raphael and the Heiyo connected, since both of them are protected from over-charge (we asked the manufacturers and they assured us this).

Both the   Raphael 520 and the Heiyo are great alternatives to the original Surface Pen, for their much lower prices and giving very good stroking performance.   They are also rechargeable so you don't need to hunt hard-to-find AAAA batteries. This is arguably better or worse, since you can also buy rechargeable   AAAA batteries that you can replace instead of needing to put the pen to rest during recharge.   Built-in rechargeable battery has a life-span too, and when they die, you can't simply replace them easily like you can with rechargeable   AAAA batteries .

We highly recommend the Raphael 520, for its price, build quality, magnetic attachment and performance.  It's almost perfect. The only downsides are  1. tilt is not sensed when erase button is pressed. 2. not the best in getting thin lines to tapper at stroke ends.  One minor negative point is that it's metal-hitting-metal when you snap it to the device. We hope   Renaisser  can  consider making the plastic cover at the top longer, so that it can act as a cushion (along with the plastic side buttons), just like the original Surface Pen. We also like the fact they include both soft and hard nibs, so that users can try and see which they like better.  

 We do not recommend the Heiyo as much, since it's pricier and does not support magnetic attachment.  Its body is mainly metal, so we also do not want to just put it on our Surface Book 2. Surface devices do get scratches so we want to avoid metal-to-metal  clinking. We also  wish they include spare nibs that give more tangible difference.   

BTW, note that these pens sense tilt only when they touch the surface.  This is a real downside for us Expresii users since we need to see the virtual brush posture before hitting the paper so that we know how the stroke starts. In this regard, these battery powered 'active' pens compare unfavorably against those EMR pens offered by e.g Wacom, Huion and XP-Pen. 
​
FYI,  we did not get any sponsorship or commission in this review and our opinions are entirely ours. 

Keyboard  are good for shortcuts, but sometimes we prefer to use a knob for more intuitive and smoother operation. The Surface Dial  ($100) was designed for such a purpose. However, the Surface Dial doesn't lend itself to muscle memory - the only operations are rotate and press so you need to rely on mode change in order to invoke more than 3 actions. That's why people like compact controllers with more buttons like the TourBox  ($158 at Amazon)  or the Clip studio TabMate    ($57) so that they can control more parameters   swiftly  without worrying about which mode they're in.

Controllers like TourBox are great to use but a bit expensive. Any alternatives that are less expensive but still give us a dial? 

We found  numerous USB volume controllers on the market. Among them, devices from iwit caught our attention  since their inexpensive knobs can actually be programmed to send custom keystrokes. They can even simulate a Surface Dial! This is a Chinese company in Beijing and they sell in Taobao (from $10)  for the Chinese market but various resellers are reselling them at Amazon or EBay (big version available at e.g. as this item at  Amazon for $31, small version at EBay for $20, big or small at Aliexpress for $20-$30).  The two we got are small ones.

The weight is just right and together with the non-skid pad it doesn't move around.  The knob on the silver one was not level when it arrived, but we managed to pull the knob out and after plugging it back it stayed leveled.   The design is simple and the knob clicks and rotates well making   It almost a fidget toy.   ​∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿ The iWit dials are notched so they don't rotate as smoothly as the Surface Dial.  They are also smaller and don't have a indention like the Shuttle Express   ($60)  does making them less suited for one-finger operation.

Programmability is not advertised but it is there.   I chatted with the seller at Taobao, who said they don't want to advertise it to avoid the trouble of providing customer support.   Why?  They said their way to program the device  can be confusing so they would rather just sell it as a simple, single-purpose USB volume controller.   ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

How to Program. The way  you program them is special. You use the app Notepad as the  display and let the device print a menu that you can choose from.  Make sure you use   EN_US keyboard layout for this.   To enter setup mode, press the iwit dial while you plug it to a computer via USB.  You should have Notepad already open and in focus when you do this so that Notepad receives all the key output from the iwit.   The rest is simply to navigate the menu with the dial itself. Each can be programmed to give different keystrokes independent of each other and thus you can connect multiple iwit knobs and have them control different things  (a bit like Palette ($330 for a Travel Console)). This is what the Surface Dial can't do, as multiple devices would only map to the same Dial API.   The same goes for ordinary USB volume controllers, since all of them would map to the same volume +/- mute keys.

If you want to control different apps without having to reprogram, you can do so  with Autohotkey, which can remap the input keys  according to the foreground app.  This requires you to do some coding with Autohotkey though.

Granted, this setup UI is not the most user-friendly, but it gets the job done. If you prefer a more user-friendly setup procedure, you probably would prefer a TourBox   ($158) ​ or a designer keyboard ($90). Taobao users would have more options like this keyboard   (RMB 399 = $56) or this dial (RMB 138 = $20) that allow custom key assignments.   Iwit also offers a  larger video editing controller    (RMB 799 = $113) at Taobao featuring a knob, a shutter ring and a dial (see photo right), but again you have to deal with their special setup UI.

Personally I'm quite happy with using a keyboard with my non-dominate hand  for hotkeys.   In Expresii, we have made common tasks like undo and redo easier:  we have Z and X as hotkeys for them so that you only need to press one key, as opposed to Ctrl-Z or Ctrl-Y which requires some finger twisting.  We still support standard multi-key  commands like Ctrl-Z and Ctrl-Y for undo and redo so that, if you're new to Expresii, those familiar key commands you got used to are still there.

That said, the only missing piece from my standard keyboard is a dial. Or, a few dials. So, I put the two iwit dials besides my keyboard. Because they are wired and the connectors stick out, I can only put them side-by-side. One knob controls Brush Wetness (hotkeys Q W)  and the other Pigment Adjuster (hotkeys , .).   And I still have more assignments available for operations of knob short press, long press, and knob rotation while pressed. So, a total of 6 assignments    per controller.

In the future, we may add the support for using multiple mice on the same computer, so that you can use your spare mice's buttons and wheels for controlling different settings in Expresii. Leave us a comment to let us  know how you like this plan.

Microsoft added the ability to add custom tools for different apps for Surface Dial.  Here is a little walk-through of such a process.  To get to the right setting page, type 'Wheel' in the search bar and choose 'Wheel Settings'.  Then see the following screenshots for guidance:

This is also  useful if you have a device that mimics a Surface Dial , such as the   iwit knob we review here and the   Huion Q620M .   Hers is an example usage of the custom tool with Expresii:

The iwit USB volume controller is a great choice if you want to add a couple of dials to complement your keyboard. They are inexpensive but reasonably well made. We thought of using multiple mice for their  wheels, but this is not the same as a dial: you cannot keep rotating a mouse wheel like you can with circular motion for a dial.   When do you need such a motion? Rotating the paper like this.   ​(^.~)☆

Today many digital artists don't have a discrete graphics card in their computers , as they only  use traditional paint programs that don't use GPU. Did you know that you can upgrade your PC with a sub $90 graphics card to use Expresii smoothly? 

We recommend a GT 1030, currently the fastest low-profile single-slot card,  because it fits most PC chassis that provide at least one half-height card slot and that it doesn't require much extra power  (most cases you don't need to upgrade your power supply). There are many brands that make graphics cards with GT 1030 and they usually come with 2GB of video  RAM. You  can get one from Gigabyte for US$85 that  is also   Amazon's Choice . ​ Those who can use Taobao can buy this GT 1030 card from Maxsun at   only   RMB439 = US$62 . We bought one when there's a discount at US60. 

We use a PC enclosed by a REALAN    e-mini   E-I7  mini-ITX chassis to show you how the installation of the graphics card is like.   The CPU in this PC is a modest Intel i3-6100. Yes, Expresii doesn't require a very fast CPU for smooth painting as most of the work is done on the GPU.

Here's a video showing the graphics card installation process:

The GT 1030 gives very good performance: 200+ FPS on Full-HD screen resolution.   For  comparison,  an older GT 730 only gives ~120 FPS.  120 FPS is already rather good for casual painting.   If you're on a really low budget, you can buy a used GT 730 for much less (~US$30).  

The resolution of your monitor does affect the speed at which Expresii runs. At 4K screen resolution, the GT 1030 still runs at a usable ~70 FPS, while the GT 730 can only do 30 FPS,  which is too slow. Notice, here the FPS is our simulation frame-rate instead of display frame-rate.

For comparison, another older low-profile single-slot card AMD Radeon 7730 (with 2GB video RAM) only gives 60 and 20 FPS for FHD and 4K respectively.  We highly recommend  you get the 1030 so that it is still fine if you use a 4K monitor to paint.

If you don't want to be limited to 8k x 8k output size as in many of the iPad paint apps, you should consider painting on a 'real' computer.  Expresii is capably of outputting to 32k x  32k (in the production version)  if you use a good graphics card and 12k x 12k in the current public version.   

The rendering in Expresii​ is unique - you won't see pixelated results like in most other painting apps (like shown on the right).  Together with our organic paint simulation, this is truly amazing!  Don't be fooled by Adobe calling their Live Brushes (oil & watercolor) in their new Adobe Fresco app ground-breaking  . The fact is, we achieved much better results in Expresii years ahead (for oil, see this video for what our Dr. Nelson Chu did previously for Microsoft).

Let us know if you have more question about hardware requirement.

The slim Desktop Dell ​  Inspiron 660s is from 2012. The   Intel integrated GPU HD Graphics 2500 that came with the  Inspiron 660s  is not suitable for Expresii.   We tried to upgrade another PC with GT 1030 too and see what performance we get. 

The Passmark CPU scores for   i3-6100  and  i5-3330S    are   5483    &   5678 respectively, so looks like they would gives similar performance if paired with the same GT 1030.  Experiment shows the newer 6th-gen    i3 GPU gives much better performance than the now 7-year-old 3rd-gen i5 GPU. Specifically its 200+ vs 110+ FPS.

Current Expresii is single-threaded. So, we should really be looking at the single-thread performance. The passmark site says   2105 and 1652 for 6100 and 3330S respectively - this probably the main factor why we get lower performance in Expresii on the 3330S.   

There are tons of cheap Surface Pen alternatives out there available for purchase online. The cheapest usually marked as 1024 pressure-levels are around US$20. Newer models supporting tilt sensing are a bit pricier.

We acquired two Surface Pen alternatives from Taobao,  namely the IQS Surface Pen 4096  and the  WiWU   P503 'Picasso' Active Stylus for testing.  Both claim to support 4096 levels of pressure and tilt sensing. Tilt sensing seriously?! Normally a 2017 Surface Pen, which supports tilt, costs US$99, but these alternatives are only a fraction of this at around US$40. We bought them when there's discount so the final prices were around US$30 each.

If you can't use Taobao, there're online stores like Amazon that sell e.g. this VORCSBINE    (looks exactly like the WiWU reviewed),   this from Lengh (looks exactly like the IQS reviewed)   , this     Penoval,   or this NewPower,  which all at around US$40 and claim to support tilt. Those pens look very similar to those two we tested so we won't be surprised if they were actually the same pens just with different labels. We didn't found any review of these pens with tilt support so we will review a few for you.

The rubbery tip feels very good, just like using the original Surface Pen -  not making any scratchy sound or friction being too large impeding your flow nor too small that it feels like skating on ice. I actually like such a rubbery tip, typically found in the Surface Pen or its alternatives, over the tips provided by Wacom.   Recent default Wacom tips are quite easily worn out when stroking against their own drawing tablets like the Intuos Pro, while their felt tips are also easy to catch dirt (and get worn out too).

These Surface Pen alternatives don't have any Bluetooth module in them, so they can't perform top button shortcut clicks like the original Surface Pen. They also don't have magnets in them so you can't adhere them on the sides of the Surface devices,  at least not securely when it's only the battery  (enclosure made of metal) inside that provides a weak adhesion.

Testing shows these cheap pens perform quite well. The IQS seems to have a smaller activation force - I can press very lightly to get a very thin line with ease. The WiWU pen on the other hand needs more force to get registered and I do get some strokes not recognized or broken due to very light pressure being used. 

The 2017 'new' Surface Pen doesn't sense tilt when we use its Eraser end to stroke. These alternative pens don't have an eraser end - instead they have two barrel buttons, one being used as the Eraser button.  From our test, the WiWU doesn't sense tilt when the eraser button is pressed, while the IQS does sense tilt but with jitters when the eraser button is pressed. 

Like the 2017 Surface Pen, these pen sense tilt only when it touches the screen. BTW,  the pleasant surprise of Surface Go giving tilt reading even when hovering is gone after some Windows Update. :(

To our surprise, our Line Tests show the IQS pen is even more sensitive than  the original 2017 Surface Pen! See the following video for comparison:

Guys, I want to stress that it's not the pressure level,  but  the activation force  and the pressure response curve that matter here  - that which make you feel how sensitive the pens are. 1024 levels are actually very enough.   Due to the API used, the pressure reading is actually converted to 1024 internally if you use the 'Windows Ink' option in Expresii. If you are using Wacom,  by default Wacom's driver also converts the reading to 1024, no matter you're using a 4k or 8k-level pen (you can disable the 1024-level cap in Wacom's driver and see if you can tell the difference :-).  Truth be told, those 4k or 8k  numbers are purely for marketing purposes. However, you may ask, then why does the 2017 Surface Pen with 4k levels feel more responsive than its previous model with just 1024 levels.   The answer is that they also improved the   activation force  and maybe also the   pressure response curve .  With smaller   activation force ,  you don't have to push so hard for the stroke be get registered.  

Center of gravity also affects how the pens feel in your hand. Both the IQS and WiWU have full-metal bodies,  while the Surface Pen is metal except its top part being plastic.   The Surface Pen has its center of gravity right at it's middle along its length (shifting balance is probably one reason why its not all metal).  The IQS has its center of gravity  quite shifted towards its top part, making it feel a little unbalanced ​ when held in hand. The WiWU is only slightly shifted towards its top so it still feels fine. Our digital scale shows all  three pens weight roughly the same at 18-19g.

These cheap pens are really great alternatives to the original Surface Pen with excellent price-performance ratio.  In particular,  the IQS pen is great for artists because it can sense small pressure well, beating even the original 2017 Surface Pen. I'd say the IQS pen's pressure sensitivity is on  par with Wacom's.   The only thing missing is the ability to sense tilt even during hover like an EMR Wacom pen does.
​
For those wanting to buy Surface Pen now, note that the  next version of Surface Pen probably will have wireless charging. You might want to wait till Microsoft’s fall event on October 2nd.

We, of course, would still like to see digital writing hardware technology further advances - currently they are only mimicking pens with hard nibs. It'd be great if hardware makers can provide tools that  simulate brushes well.   Leave your comment on what else you would like to see in future digital writing instruments.

Following our last blog entry, we continue to test Expresii on the Deskmini A300, this time with external graphics cards.   We only bought two   new items: 1. M.2 to PCI-E x4 Adapter Card (US$2; US$6 at Amazon),  2.  PCI-E x1 to x16 ribbon cable (US$4; similar item $17 at Amazon) from taobao.  This setup needs an external power supply and we simply use one from our other PC's.   

We tried an nvidia GTX 1060 and two lower-end cards GT 640 and GTX 750 Ti.   The M.2 adapter slot is not open-ended so in order to insert the graphics cards directly onto it, we need to first cut it open (reference).

We get 180+ FPS on 4k with the 1060 connected at 4x PCI-E speed.  When at 1x (via ribbon cable), we get only 80+ FPS.  At Full-HD, we get 180+ FP with 4x;   150+ FPS, 1x. With lower-end cards, we basically only get around 30 FPS, which is even much lower then what we get with the integrated Radeon Vega 11 in the Ryzen 2400G (95+ FPS).

With adapter and cable totaling a mere US$6, we are able to test out the external GPU setup with either 1x and 4x PCI-E speed. You  probably want to use a US$89 riser    (similar item US$43 at taobao) instead for easier setup with 4x speed for for proper performance. Or, at least this adapter+cable (US$17 at taobao) to minimize physical interfaces.

​We're satisfied by the performance increase from Ryzen APU 2400G's Vega 11 GPU running at 95+ FPS on  Full-HD to GTX 1060 running at 180+ FPS on 4k  monitor.

See this   youtube video  for adapter & cable options.

We're often asked what PC would be good to run Expresii. ​ ​In this blog entry we show you a few mini PC options. Note that if you don't need a PC such small, there're cheaper solutions if you build regular ITX PC's, which are a bit bigger.  

​For your reference, we tested a mini PC using the Asrock Deskmini A300. Specifically, we built a system with a AMD Ryzen 5 2400G CPU, 16 GB of DDR4 2666MHz RAM, and a 2.5" 256GB SSD hard drive.  The Ryzen  2400G has an integrated GPU Radeon RX Vega 11, which performs much better than those integrated GPU's from Intel, is fast enough for running Expresii smoothly. Note that you can still go by with 8GB of RAM and just 128GB of storage space if you have a tighter budget.

The DeskMini PC box is only 15 x 15 x 8 cm, with the power brick  1/6 of the box size. Total hardware cost the main unit  (i.e. excluding monitor, mouse and keyboard) is USD380.  ​ Depending on how you get a license for   Windows OS, the final cost could be sub-$400. There are also ready-to-use pre-built units available at e.g. Amazon at around $620 (OS included) ​ for those of you who don't want to build a PC yourselves.

I once had a   Mac Mini    but it died in just a few years - since the CPU is soldered onto the main board, I can not simply replace the faulty component like I can with a regular PC. ​ What is great about this Deskmini is that you can still upgrade the various components like CPU, RAM, storage like you do with a regular PC.   So I think the  a mini PC  with Ryzen 2400G & Asrock Deskmini A300 is a   sweet spot  on price, compactness & ability to change components.

On such a system with Ryzen 2400G, we get 95 FPS  when using a FHD (1920 x 1080) monitor.   The mainboard allows a little overclocking of the RAM, and we get 100+ FPS if we overclock the RAM from 2666 to 3000 MHz. 

The Deskmini also has an Intel version, but the supported Intel GPU's (e.g. HD 630) are much slower so we don't recommend the Intel variant.

The m2 eGPU kit with power supply mentioned in the 2nd video costs $116 from Ali Express (get the same thing + power supply for $50 from taobao if you can read Chinese and get them ship to your region). A used GTX 1060 with 6GB RAM could be as low as $135 on eBay. So, with a few hundreds of dollars you can add a powerful graphics card with when you need it.   For even cheaper solution, look at this guide and buy the NGFF version (i.e. for M.2)  dock. More reference here.

If you   have some more money to spare, and don't want to mess around with PC building, we recommend the Intel   Hades Canyon NUC:

The   Intel   Hades Canyon NUC  (Vega M GH, 16Gb RAM, 256 GB SSD at $1300)  is even  smaller than the Asrock DeskMini A300 yet much more powerful.   Its   Radeon RX Vega M GH GPU, which is much faster than the Vega 11 in the Deskmini,  allows you to run Expresii on a 4k monitor smoothly. If the 1k+ price tag is a litte too high, thre's also a version with a slower GPU  Vega M GL.   Also, look at eBay and sometimes there're offers in the $500-600 range as a barebone (i.e. you add your own RAM and storage).

Other ready-to-use mini PC's with   Radeon RX Vega M GH GPU (but not as tiny as the Intel NUC) include   this    Beelink Kaby G7   (with 16GB RAM + 256 GB SSD at $1150)  and   the   HiGame from Chuwi  at $1300.    

Conclusion?   You don't need a huge PC to run Expresii fast! ​╭( ･ㅂ･)و ̑̑    

We were excited ever since the first Surface Book came out in 2015, since it gave the option for a discrete GPU.​ Now we have a chance to test with a Surface Book 2, thanks to Microsoft for providing the hardware for testing.

We are provided with the 13.5" model. Coming from the 12" Surface Pro, I like the bigger screen size.   The hardware feels really solid and clean. And of course, with an nvidia GTX 1050, we get very good performance, although it gets a bit hot and the fan would kick on. 

See the calligraphy process video in Youtube:

 Hong Kong-based artist Shuen Leung   tries out Microsoft Surface Studio and Surface Book 2:

Shuen does artwork in both traditional and digital media.  She specially likes Expresii for its ability to undo.   "Expresii 是可以undo 的 水墨!"     (ﾉ´ヮ´)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

Check out her website and Facebook page for  works, art tips and more.