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"PRO" tablets

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Overview

At any point in the drawing tablet market, you'll see tablets labelled as "pro." Often these are sold alongside non-pro versions at the same time.

You cannot rely on the Pro designation to mean anything significant.

You cannot rely on the Pro designation to mean "better."

"Pro" has no standard meaning — either across different drawing tablet brands, or among models within the same brand.

If you're choosing between two tablets with similar names and one has "pro" in its name, do not automatically assume the pro version is better. Instead, look at the specific features of both tablets.

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Example: Huion Kamvas 13

Consider these two tablets from Huion:

  • Huion Kamvas 13 GEN3 (GS1333)

  • Huion Kamvas Pro 13 (GT-133)

Between these two, I highly recommend the Huion Kamvas 13 GEN3 over the Kamvas Pro 13. A closer look reveals that the Kamvas 13 GEN3 is superior in some important ways.

Specifically, the Kamvas 13 GEN3 is a much more recent tablet with a better screen and a much better pen that handles pressure more accurately.

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Technology evolution over the years

One challenge when choosing tablets is that retail sites like Amazon list both old and new tablets side by side. These tablets can be from different years and therefore belong to different generations of technology. Over time, pens have improved and so have displays — so a modern non-pro tablet might outperform a pro tablet from a few years ago in some ways.

For example, laminated displays used to be exclusive to pro tablets. Now they're starting to appear in non-pro tablets as well.

Pen technology has also evolved significantly for some tablets.

A great example is the Huion PW600L pen, which rivals some of Wacom's professional pens based on my testing — and that same testing shows that older pens, while not bad, simply don't handle pressure as well.

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Practical tips

  • Pay attention to when the tablet was released.

  • Pay attention to the included pen — some recently released tablets may still ship with older pen technology.

  • Pay attention to the model number. Some tablets have very similar names but are very different. For example: Huion Kamvas 13 GEN3 (GS1333) vs Huion Kamvas 13 (GS1331).

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