Best drawing pad

ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites, best drawing pad. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we best drawing pad earn affiliate commissions. This helps support our work, but does not affect what we cover or how, and it does not affect the price you pay.

Even as screen-based work replaces more and more of the time that people spend with paper, using a pencil remains a near-universal skill, for good reason. Drawing and writing by hand rank among the most intuitive kinds of physical interaction for most people, and drawing tablets translate that movement almost directly to a PC, laptop, or phone. As a result, drawing tablets can be indispensable tools for creating art and performing more complicated image editing, and they can also be lifesavers for people who encounter some kinds of repetitive strain injury or pain while using traditional mice or laptop touchpads. In previous years, a good, full-featured drawing tablet would often cost hundreds of dollars. Offering a smooth drawing experience and plenty of space and hotkeys, this model is a great drawing tablet for all but the most demanding professionals. While its huge size, expansive list of features, and fully wireless capability are more than most people need from a drawing tablet, this tablet justifies its higher price, offering a premium drawing experience. The byinch Huion Inspiroy 2 M offers a lot of space to sketch on, allowing for comfortable drawing while not taking up too much of a desk.

Best drawing pad

Best drawing tablet overall 2. Best large drawing tablet 3. Best budget drawing tablet 4. Best pen display overall 5. Best Wacom pen display 6. Best budget pen display 7. Best pen computer overall 8. Best pen computer for 3D 9. Being able to replicate the feel of using a pencil on paper to interact with a screen is crucial for many jobs, and the best drawing tablets enable this unique interaction perfectly for digital artists and other creatives. There are three types of drawing tablet. A drawing tablet is a traditional graphics tablet; a flat, slim slate-like device with high levels of accuracy — that you need an external screen for. Pen displays work like traditional drawing tablets but replace the tracking pad with a display, enabling you to draw directly onto the screen. Finally, pen computers enable you to draw directly onto a screen with a stylus but also run art apps natively like an iPad. To help you choose the best option for you, we've extensively tested a wide range of drawing tablets and curated views from our reviewers, assessing their design, performance, software and price to find the best option for different uses.

If you're using a screenless tablet for drawing for the first time, it may take up best drawing pad a few weeks to get used to. This is one of the two main compromises that Huion makes with this tablet, the other being the absence of touch input. Good for An excellent mobile art tablet, compliments a desktop setup, no need for a laptop or PC, iPad, Samsung and XPPen offer excellent stylus, touch and gesture controls, best drawing pad, bespoke apps like Procreate, can have other uses.

By Jess Weatherbed , a news writer focused on creative industries, computing, and internet culture. Jess started her career at TechRadar, covering news and hardware reviews. If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement. While varied in design, each drawing tablet serves the same purpose: to replace your mouse or trackpad with a digital stylus that feels more natural to draw or edit with. Some users prefer to stick with Wacom — the most trusted and recognized brand of drawing tablets — because of their reputation for build quality, reliable drivers, and software. Who is this drawing tablet for?

ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we may earn affiliate commissions. This helps support our work, but does not affect what we cover or how, and it does not affect the price you pay. Indeed, we follow strict guidelines that ensure our editorial content is never influenced by advertisers. ZDNET's editorial team writes on behalf of you, our reader. Our goal is to deliver the most accurate information and the most knowledgeable advice possible in order to help you make smarter buying decisions on tech gear and a wide array of products and services. Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form.

Best drawing pad

Even as screen-based work replaces more and more of the time that people spend with paper, using a pencil remains a near-universal skill, for good reason. Drawing and writing by hand rank among the most intuitive kinds of physical interaction for most people, and drawing tablets translate that movement almost directly to a PC, laptop, or phone. As a result, drawing tablets can be indispensable tools for creating art and performing more complicated image editing, and they can also be lifesavers for people who encounter some kinds of repetitive strain injury or pain while using traditional mice or laptop touchpads. In previous years, a good, full-featured drawing tablet would often cost hundreds of dollars. Offering a smooth drawing experience and plenty of space and hotkeys, this model is a great drawing tablet for all but the most demanding professionals. While its huge size, expansive list of features, and fully wireless capability are more than most people need from a drawing tablet, this tablet justifies its higher price, offering a premium drawing experience.

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Cintiq models and other graphics tablets also known as pen displays or pen tablets build the tracking technology into a display, allowing you to draw directly on them. Drawing tablets are also excellent tools for working with 3D modeling programs and other situations where a pencil-shaped input tool makes sense. It is underpowered compared to my iPad Pro, but I would use this instead of an iPad or iPad air and this is much cheaper than all three Apple options as it just feels great to use. While its huge size, expansive list of features, and fully wireless capability are more than most people need from a drawing tablet, this tablet justifies its higher price, offering a premium drawing experience. We also have picks for Android tablets, ebook readers, and more. Pen displays work like traditional drawing tablets but replace the tracking pad with a display, enabling you to draw directly onto the screen. The Wacom Cintiq Pro 24 comes in four sizes, depending on your drawing needs: 16", 24", 27", or 32". The programmable buttons are also a good first step into learning how to utilize macros and hotkeys with creative software. My experience with this tablet was fairly easy and enjoyable especially for someone who is not a professional artist. Having a choice between different pens is great if you like to switch things up depending on your current task — for example, I prefer to use the slimmer stylus when sketching and move to the thicker pen for coloring or 3D sculpting. The Inspiroy 2 M has eight hotkeys along the left side of the tablet. I was happy to use it for all of my usual tasks, from line art on Clip Studio Paint to sculpting models in Blender, with no real issues besides knowing that pricier display tablets would typically produce smoother lines. Arthur Gies.

Best overall 2. Best with screen 3.

If the tablet includes or is best compatible with a specific stylus, we also test these to see how ergonomic they are and assess any features these add to the drawing experience as well as build quality. Our process. Best pen computer overall. Find out more by reading our Wacom Cintiq 22 review. It can connect to your main device via USB or Bluetooth too, so you don't need to worry about wires. Wacom has been in this game a long time, and it's hard to imagine an artist with any complaints about the Pro Pen 2. Such trials can be especially useful for beginners who have little experience with drawing-tablet-compatible software. I also tested the responsiveness of the buttons and their overall feel, and I inspected each tablet for its build quality and overall construction. I also paid attention to how well each tablet seemed to register inputs toward the outer edges of the drawing surface. The Wacom MobileStudio Pro 16 is a powerhouse and large pen computer that can run full versions of software, unlike iPad Pro that runs paired-down apps. I attempted to fix this by adjusting the stylus options in the Wacom drivers, which helped with the feel of the stylus but introduced a slight stutter in both Windows 11 and macOS Sonoma.