I have been using my mouse to draw and write while teaching online (in combination with a lifetime of general mouse use) for long enough that I got pretty good at it, but there was always a speed-legibility tradeoff being made and during busy periods where I might be writing for 8+ hours a day, a week in a row, my shoulder and wrist would start to get strained from the position and movement.
Once I decided to look into getting a tablet, either to replace the mouse entirely or to at least offer and alternative ergonomic position, I came across many candidates. After striking the draw-on-screen options (I don't need this, it would mean a huge desktop space investment, and these devices are usually an order of magnitude or so more expensive), there were still several good options but XP Pen's offerings stood out as being really reasonably priced and loved just about as much as options from other companies like Wacom. I almost bought the Deco 01 V2, but checked the company's page and saw that this newer offering was available, so I went with the Deco LW.
The pen it comes with is great. Batteryless, so that's one fewer thing to forget to charge or maintain, and it functions perfectly as far as I can tell. It detects and responds just as I would expect, zero complaints on this front.
The working area is very comfortable for me. I have plenty of space to write and draw accurately (I have the pen set up to map to the area of one of my monitors), but it's not a chore to reach anything on the screen.
The buttons are buttons, nicely programmable (you can even have them run simple button sequences or execute a few other features to adjust the tablet's behavior or launch a program [or shortcut, which you could have do whatever your mind and scripting talents allow you to do]), and a nice feature on the tablet. I will definitely use them sometimes, but for how I typically work I will likely have my left hand on my keyboard much more often than not. Still a very nice feature to have, and I'm sure I will use it sometimes when I want to do something with just the writing pad on my lap instead of on my desk above my keyboard.
The software has been almost flawless so far, though there are a couple of features I would like. It installed easily, the pairing software worked on the first try (and my computer has grabbed the tablet every time I've unplugged the wired connection, no problem), and the features are easy to program and seem to do what I tell them to do. I have had a couple of occurrences of settings getting reverted, but I *think* this has to do with the fact that sometimes I'll end up with multiple Settings windows opened up by virtue of the fact that the window pops up when the tablet is connected (and doesn't close itself when the tablet is disconnected). I will keep an eye on this, and it's inconvenient, but not a terribly big issue and shouldn't ever cause a problem unless you're actively changing settings.
A feature I would appreciate is if the pen buttons could modify the pen touch behavior rather than simply creating the behavior when the buttons are pressed. The most obvious example of this is that the lower pen button defaults to "right click", which is handy, but it simply sends "right click" when you press the button which is a bit unwieldy. I would like to be able to hold the button, then tap with the pen and receive a right click where I tapped. Similar middle click behavior would be nice.
Bluetooth has worked great so far. I usually just use the tablet plugged in, but I've tried wireless a couple of times and there hasn't been an appreciable amount of lag or stuttering in my experience. Basically feels like it's plugged in. Will update if my experience changes down the line but I would be surprised.
The colors offered are pleasant to look at. I almost always go "black" for my electronics, but decided to get a blue tablet. It stands out, but in a nice and unobtrusive way. The green also looks nice, and if ever I got my wife her own I'm sure she would like the pink one.
One minor design gripe I have is that the keys have little bumps on them to denote which key you're touching, but the layout is none of symmetrical, antisymmetrical, or braille. They could have used the braille numbers (1-8) or letters (A-H), which would have been a neat touch, or they could have created some unidirectional dot pattern that continued down the buttons, or they could have had the bottom half mirror the top half. What we get is as follows (top to bottom)
Smooth
1 dot
/ 2 dots in that relative position
r 3 dots sort of like an "r" (2 then 1)
J 3 dots sort of like a backwards L (1 then 2) <- Fine up to this point; they mirrored to say "you're not on button4 anymore)
/ 2 dots in the same relative position as button2 <- This will probably bother me as long as I have this tablet
1 dot
Smooth
This is very much a "me" problem, but just flip the one button from / to \ and it would at least look like you mirrored the bottom half!
Anyway, long ramble short, if you're looking for a really good, not expensive tablet with nice features and little hassle, this has been all of the above for me so far.
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