XENCELABS Drawing Tablet Small, Portable Wireless Graphic Tablets, Ultrathin Pen Tablet with 2 Battery-Free Stylus, 8192 Levels Pressure, 16:9 Aspect Ratio Digital Art Pad for Win/Mac/Linux

What can I say?
Before I give my sincere review I must give the reason why I purchased this tablet. I’m not new to drawing tablets, I’ve had several. My first one was a 4″x6″ Wacom many years ago. Since then I’ve had 3 Huion tablets, the last of which was an Inspiroy 2. Then I obtained a Huion Kamvas 12 which I thought would be what I really needed. First off, there were a few problems that I encountered. One was the wires. The 3 in 1 cable required 2 USB ports and an HDMI connection.My laptop doesn’t have an HDMI port so I had to purchase a hub. Then I bought a 27″ monitor which also required an HDMI port.and The other issue was having to use it flipped. My biggest quirk was looking down at the screen which gave me a lot of neck and shoulder pain. Having to use the pen display in tablet mode defeated the purpose of using the screen.Now, in comes the Xence labs tablet. First of all, the packaging was superb. A lot of thought went into making a great presentation. Unboxing, everything was of superb quality. It came with a very nice carrying case that can hold the tablet, the USB cable and the pen case without being bulky. The pens themselves are a bit weighty but they feel great in my hand. The pen case, the pens and the tablet are of excellent build quality, top notch! The Huion pen display had more lag than I needed but this Xencelab tablet had no lag whatsoever. The buttons on the pens are raised just enough so that I don’t accidentally hit the buttons while using the pens. I use the 3 button pen more often and I replaced the tip of the slim pen with a felt tip for when I’m doing more detailed work. The tablet itself is solid and has more of a feel of pencil on paper. Downloading the software was fairly simple and quite easy to use, very straightforward. You can customize the tablet up with whatever apps you have in your system, making it extremely versatile.Paired with the Quick Keys these make an awesome combination, and greatly improves my workflow. I use GIMP and Autodesk Sketchbook Pro and I must say that this tablet is very accurate. Value wise, this was a great investment that will serve my needs for years to come!

Impressive build quality, solid software
I’ve used numerous graphics tablets over the years, and they all seem deficient in some key way. So, I was a bit hesitant to give this tablet a try, as I didn’t know much about the brand. I’m glad I did. The quality of the tablet, pens, and case is outstanding. Very solid feel, good build quality. (Not that packaging is that crucial, but it was really gorgeous). The tablet was a breeze to set up and wireless connectivity was up and running with zero fiddling. It performs great, and best of all, the software is really top-notch—most tablets have bloated or flaky drivers and software. It’s clear the team at Xenelabs really wanted the software to be as good as the hardware, and they accomplished their goal. Bottom line: this is a great tablet at a great price.

Cuenta con todos sus accesorios necesarios para trabajar de manera cómoda, aparte de ofrecerte una sensibilidad al momento de trazar que personalmente me fascinó mucho. 100% recomendado.

Mixed feelings about this tablet. The build quality and feel is pretty great (better than Wacom). However, at least on MacOS, it’s a bit stymied by the software, at least for 3D Apps.The tablet is broken in Houdini (selecting objects in the viewport is bust for a start, along with other odd behaviours) and Silo. Seemed to work OK in Blender in my somewhat limited testing.To their credit XENCE Labs were initially good in trying debug the problem; however they now seem to be largely ignoring the support ticket, so assuming that the issue will not be fixed.TL;DR: Good quality tablet, probably great for 2D, however software support is lacking so YMMV depending on what applications you use.

Disclosure: we’ve reviewed two Xencelabs tablets now, this one with a 10.3×5.75″ active area and a smaller one. They’re functionally the same beyond the size of the active area (and the smaller one being less expensive) so our reviews are substantively the same.BACKGROUNDBetween two of us, we ran a marketing design team, and a current print and digital media design team for a marketing company, and a non-profit respectively. Both of our teams used drawing tablets for years, first when Wacom came out in the early days of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop (hint: we’re old) and more recently we went down the rabbit-hole of more modern tablets. Some of the team use iPad and Apple Pencils to draw directly, others have Huion Kamvas tablets with built in displays connected to computers, and still others are using tablets without built-in displays.Xencelabs tablets: we were strongly leaning toward either buying more Huion tablets (with LCDs) or Wacoms (without) but were offered the Xencelabs tablet to review so we put it through its paces.In short: it *is* indeed a Wacom crusher and the latter had better stop resting on their laurels. Construction, fit and finish and overall presentation is high end – much like Apple products, there’s not a line out of place.The pens feel perfect in the hand and don’t cause fatigue when used for extended periods of time, with the buttons placed where you’d want for ease of access without accidental activation. We especially appreciate the inclusion of two versions – a narrow and a wide with flared end – as this mimics a lot of the conventional drawing instruments we use. (Rapidograph pen, drafting pencils, larger Japanese paint brushes)The combination of the tip material and the tablet surface produce a satisfyingly “paper-like” experience – just enough friction to maintain precise control but not so much as to become fatiguing or prevent smooth pen strokes.The tablet itself is “right sized” when taking advantage of the wireless capability and using it in your lap or held with a hand – both the thickness and X/Y dimensions – and it sits at a nice angle on hard surfaces for use at a desk.An area where a lot of budget tablets fall down is app support and configuration software but these are areas Xencelabs invested a lot, and it shows: the tablet (buttons and surface) and styluses are easy to configure and we haven’t run into any compatibility issues with the usual array of software (Adobe, Apple, Android, iOS/iPadOS etc) – anything we’ve used the Wacom or Huion with just works with Xencelabs where some other budget tablets we’ve tried have limitations.In short: if you’re looking at Wacom tablets but balking at the price, give this Xencelabs 12×9 tablet a try, or go with the smaller variant if you’re on a tighter budget.