7P notes: Tier 2 drawing tablet brands
Overview
HUION (https://www.huion.com/) and XP-PEN (https://www.xp-pen.com/) are the next big tablet brands. Their recent (2021 and later) models have been pretty good - but still trail Wacom a bit in quality and reliability. In general I think they offer 90% of what you get with a WACOM but at a substantial price reduction.
Like Wacom they both have a wide variety of products available.
What HUION and XP-PEN do well:
Good price vs cost
Their latest offerings since 2021 are very usable for creative tasks.
They introduce new models frequently - much more often than Wacom.
Their consumer level tablets tend to have more features than Wacom's consumer models (tilt & tablet buttons, dials, knobs)
How Huion and XP-PEN could do better
Huion pen displays - especially the high PPI ones tend to show more AG sparkle. more here: Anti-glare sparkle.
Pointer lag:
XP-pen pen displays tend to exhibit slightly more pointer lag than Wacom or Huion. More here: lag.
XP-Pen and Huion's pen tablets seem to have the same level of pointer lag.
Improve their Core EMR tech and specs - while on paper equivalent to Wacom are still trailing. For many artists they may not notice this, but tablet enthusiasts do certainly notice it. (Will be a topic for a future video)
Improve customer support. Both Huion and XP-Pen struggle with customer support. They tend to take more time to respond.
Reliability - Huion and XP-pen a little lag behind Wacom.
They offer too many products - with new models (with newer tech) and older models (with older tech) sitting alongside them. This makes it confusing to buyers.
They should monitor and answer questions on https://www.reddit.com/r/huion/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/XPpen/
Long-term reliability unknown compared to Wacom. This can't be helped, they have only been around since 2011 (Huion) and 2005 (XP-Pen). And their true EMR tablets (the ones where the pens do not have a battery) have only been around since the late 2010s.
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