I ordered this tablet to replace my old Wacom Intuous (First Gen) pen tablet. I couldn't see shelling out $200 bucks or more on a Wacom Intuous Medium when this tablet did "almost" the same thing without tilt. Since I don't really use the tilt feature with digital airbrushes (My old Wacom didn't have it), I didn't feel like I would miss it. I needed the pen tablet for Architectural Rendering, Photo Touch-up, hobby comic drawing, working in office applications and review markups.
I did not have high expectations, but when the pen tablet arrived I was floored! The tablet seems very well constructed, the Windows driver works just fine with one small exception I will note later, and it worked with all the applications I use. The pen glides nicely across the surface, and the pen itself feels good. The pen is about as heavy as a Sharpie Pen Stylo fine tip pen, has two buttons, and is rechargeable. (I charged it once for 4 hours, and I've used it all week long without any trouble.) To help others, here is what I tested the pen tablet with:
Gimp 2.8
Corel Painter 8
Adobe Photoshop
Autodesk SketchBook
DraftSight
InkScape
Microsoft Office (OneNote, Word, Excel, and Outlook)
Microsoft Visio
Sketchup
PicsArt
Krita
MS Paint
… and the tablet worked with pressure sensitivity in all of them. The Windows driver allowed me to assign shortcuts to all of the buttons without any trouble. I really like the pen and the pen holder, and the extras including a travel pouch and glove that came with it. I really don't use the glove. Over the years of using real mediums and drafting, my hand is conditioned not to touch the tablet (paper/canvas) anyway, but it is nice that the manufacturer included it with the tablet free!
Here is the one small exception I talked about earlier:
If your computer goes into "sleep" mode, it can cause the pen not to register with the device. Simply unplug the USB cable, plug it back in, wait five seconds, and it works fine. I went ahead and turned sleep mode off on my desktop computer. On my laptop I just unplug and plug in when this occurs.
The only other caveat, or just possibly a personal preference, is that the USB cord doesn't feel extremely "tough." Since I like things that feel durable, I ordered an extra USB cable. I ordered the IMKEY® Premium 6.5 Feet Tangle-Free Braided Micro USB 2.0 Sync Data Fast Charging Cable For Samsung,Google Nexus,Kindle,LG,HTC,Nokia,Motorola,Blackberry,And More – (Gray) cable because I like the durability while using it with my laptop. That way I could leave the factory cable attached to my desktop.
I've read the reviews of others complaining about possible driver issues, but we have to be honest here. As a long time Wacom snob myself… Wacom's drivers were never very good either. I've spent close to a decade trying to get their drivers to work with new software, operating systems, and hardware changes. Huion's drivers seem to work just as good 😉 and they have a brand new set of Mac driver updates that seem to work fine on the Mac's in the graphics department. I had to take my tablet to work and let the other artists drool over my new toy too! Now if only they eventually release their own Linux drivers…
Linux Note: This tablet doesn't yet have Linux drivers, but the 610Pro does, and I have been able to get it to work on Ubuntu with those drivers without access to all the buttons, but it does work and so does the pressure sensitivity. You can get the Linux driver from the DIGImend project on GitHub.
My Personal Recommendation (For what it is worth):
I've been using pen tablets for over a decade, mostly for architectural rendering, company logos, and drawing "naughty" comics when I should be working (Hey don't judge me here…). I would strongly recommend this tablet to others. You get a very professional looking and working tablet that feels very durable for a fraction of the inflated priced Wacom equivalent. It has a nice large drawing area (about the same width as a standard keyboard without the number pad area), pen pressure sensitivity, and if you check out the Huion blogs, you'll find no shortage of interactive discussions where the manufacturer actually participates and responds to customer questions (not poking at Wacom at all here). The tablet doesn't make the artist, and most tablets will work for anyone who has experience with digital pens, but this tablet has all the bells and whistles (minus a pen with a gyroscope) that tablets priced $200 plus and above have for half the price. One last note: Since Wacom ships with some free painting software, I'd like to note that the fine group over at Krita has a free open source painting software you can download at Krita dot org.
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