There are many tablet brands. And picking the brand of the tablet is one of the most important decisions you will need to make.
I covered brands extensively in this video: https://youtu.be/kw7fKQik3YY
If you are not familiar with drawing tablets, please read the Beginner's guide to drawing tablets
Wacom continues to make the highest quality and most reliable tablets. In general, Wacom has tghe best drawing experience. Their products are the most expensive. I consider Wacom to be the "safe choice". More here: my notes on Wacom
Huion and XP-pen since about 2021 have been releasing solid devices
And although they have a large lineup of products that can be a little confusing
In 2023 and 2024 Huion and XP have released models with upgraded tech that are challenging Wacom's professional line. These include:
Huion:Kamvas Pro 19, Kamvas Pro 27
XP-Pen: Deco Pro GEN2, Artist Pro GEN2
These brands trail Wacom in tech. Customer support is also trailing but improving.
Community is large so you can find help from others.
The have a large porfolio of tablets - too large actually.
Research your choice and you should find something that works well for you. Drawing experience good, typically you may find you need to perform more customization (pressure curves, etc.) to get the drawing experience that works for you. More here: My notes on Tier 2 drawing tablet brands
Xencelabs (founded 2019) is a new brand focused only on professional tablets and have a very strong focus on customer support. more here: my notes on Xencelabs
After Wacom, Huion, XP-Pen, there are many other brands that focus on budget or consumer tablets. All these brands the same technology as the Tier 2 brands. In fact they are even owned by the same companies. But have smaller portfolios, less responsive customer support, and smaller communities.
Artisul - https://artisul.com/
Gaomon - https://www.gaomon.net/
Ugee - https://www.ugee.com/
Veikk - https://www.veikk.com/
Parblo - https://www.parblo.com/
Avoid
No brand's products are consistently perfect.
All brands will eventually ship a product that has defective units or that will have sporadic problems with their drivers, etc. So, at some point you will need help.
This is why you MUST choose a brand that:
Supports its customers well
Has enough other people using their tablets, so that you can get help from the community.
Communities are where a people can learn and get help with drawing tablets. Depending on the brand there are different options. More here: Drawing tablet communities
All drawing tablets have multiple components, but the primary component is the EMR sensor - which also called the digitizer.
And despite all the many brands of drawing tablets you see, there are only a couple of manufacturers of digitizers. These are: Wacom, Hanvon Ugee, Huion.
Wacom digitizers are used in their own products.
Hanvon Ugee supplies digitizers to Xencelabs and XP-pen tablets
Huion supplies supplies digitizers for: Gaomon, Huion, Veikk tablets. And Huion supplies digitizers for Artisul tablets through their acquisition of UCLogic.
Huion acquired UCLogic in 2019 (https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/UC-Logic_Technology_Corp.)
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.
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)
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.
Xencelabs (https://www.xencelabs.com/) is trying to position itself as a direct competitor to Wacom - as you can see from the pricing of their products.
They are a very new brand and have a small product line as of Jan 2024:
Xencelabs Pen Display 23
Xencelabs Pen Tablet Medium
Xencelabs Pen Tablet Small
I used a Xencelabs Medium tablet (BPH1212W-A) for about six months. I was very satisfied with it for doing artwork. But that was before I started learning more about how tablets worked, so I'm sure I missed evaluating it completely.
They are very thoughtful about the design of their products. You can see small touches that make a difference. For example:
Their pen tablets are exactly 16x9 aspect ratio
The front edge of their pen tablets are slightly slopped so there's less of a hard edge hitting your wrist
The "feel" and quality of materials is excellent - Wacom tier.
Their driver experience is easily the most well thought-out, user-friendly and attractive of any tablet brand.
Their tablets come with 2 pens. This is great because if you are having difficulties you se if switching pens helps.
I don't have any direct experience with their support. I haven't needed to contact them for any issue. But from what I have seen Xencelabs support is extremely good.
Their EMR tech is the same place as XP-Pen. If they are going to challenge Wacom at the same price point this should improve.
There aren't that many Xencelabs users out there - so if you need community help there are very few people in the community who can help and you'll need to rely Xencelab's customer support.
As of September 2023, their Windows driver does not support connecting multiple Xencelabs tablets being connected at the same time. In my observation, their driver becomes extremely confused when multiple Xencelabs tablets are plugged in and it requires a driver restart to get it back to normal. All of Wacom, Huion, XP-pens drivers handle multiple tablets at the same time.
As of Jan 2024, they have some portfolio gaps
They don't have a LARGE pen tablet model - something comparable to the Wacom Intuos Pro Large.
They don't have a pen display in the 16" size.
The undisputed leading brand is Wacom (https://www.wacom.com). They have a variety of products and different price points that should fit everyone's needs. If you don't want to weigh the pros and cons of different brands and want an easy answer then choose Wacom.
My experience: I currently own 39 Wacom tablets (6 pen displays and 33 pen tablets). I have extensively used every tablet in their professional series.
Some basic summaries of their leading series of tablets
Intuos Pro - professional pen tablets. continue to be the best pen tablets ever made
Cintiq Pro - professional pen displays - continue to be the best pen displays ever made
One by Wacom - consumer pen tablets - are terrific beginner tablets
Wacom One - consumer pen tablets an pen displays - mixed bag of results here.
Best EMR tech. This may not be obvious just by comparing specs, but their EMR tablet technology is ahead.
Long-term reliability. Their older tablets (20+ years old) still work today if you use the appropriate driver.
They have products for beginners, intermediate users, and professionals - but even their beginner products are very high quality.
They have good support.
They monitor and respond to questions on https://www.reddit.com/r/wacom
One thing you'll notice about Wacom is that they tend to keep certain features in their professional line of products. In fact over time they have tended to remove features from their consumer tablets and move them only to the pro line. Other manufacturers tend to have those features consumer and professional lines.