Xencelabs Medium Tablet Bundle Review
First of all, thank you Xencelabs team @xencelabs_us for inviting me to try out your new tablet bundle. I appreciate the opportunity very much!
When I opened the packaging, I was delighted to see so many items included in the Xencelabs medium tablet bundle.
The Xencelabs Pen Tablet Medium Bundle ships with a protective carrying case for the tablet and all of the accessories including the Quick Keys, the pen case that contains both digital pens, dongle, adapter, nibs, nib extractor, and a drawing glove.
Two digital pens are included, a 3-button pen and a thin pen which feels similar to an Apple Pencil and a set of extra nibs is also included. The felt nibs feel natural to sketch with.
The Xencelabs Quick Keys unit enables artists to incorporate shortcut keys into their personal workflow.
The tablet is beautiful and from an ergonomic standpoint is comfortable to use. The front of the tablet facing the artist is tapered and it’s comfortable to rest your wrist on its edge as you draw.
I like the elegant simplicity of the tablet itself and it looks well made. A lot of careful attention was spent on the accessories, as well.
When testing the tablet, I explored using it with Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop. The digital pen that I most like to use is the 3 button pen, as it was most comfortable for my hand. The thinner pen is nice for writing.
The medium tablet features 8192 pressure levels and is capable of drawing and painting clean, smooth brushstrokes. The tablet and pen allow 60° of tilt, but I discovered right away that rotation is not recognized.
As an artist, I enjoy simplicity when painting my digital fine art from scratch. I prefer a high quality tablet and pen set up simply so the drawing and painting experience feels as natural as possible.
The Quick Keys unit is useful for production illustration jobs or for photo editing and retouching where there are repetitive tasks, but I would rarely utilize it for my fine art painting experience.
Many of the brushes that I use in Corel Painter have rotation incorporated into them and an Art Pen that recognizes rotation is needed to quickly pull brush strokes accurately, in a natural way.
I was curious to test the Xencelabs medium tablet with three button pen along side my Wacom Intuos Pro medium tablet and 4D Art Pen.
With both tablets and pen set ups I was able to paint smooth brush strokes. Some of the brush hairs looked a tiny bit mechanical or stiff with the Xencelabs set up. The Wacom set up painted brushstrokes (and brush hairs) that seemed to achieve finer, more realistic brushstrokes and with grainy dry media like Pastel and Charcoal the Wacom set up achieved subtly more natural texture. The difference is small but as a very experienced Painter user, I noticed the differences.
Also, with the Xencelabs set up using only Tilt, it took more trial and error to pull brushstrokes along directions that I want to paint them. With the Wacom tablet and Art Pen, I am able to paint them immediately, accurately positioning and pulling a stroke the desired direction that I want to paint.
Conclusion: For my painting experience, I prefer using the Wacom Intuos Pro with Art Pen that incorporates rotation. For illustration and photo editing, the Xencelabs tablet and pens, with Quick Keys unit is a great solution, if an illustrator or photo-artist feels that 60° Tilt and pressure sensitivity is preferable for their working style. For a production setting with repetitive tasks, the Quick Keys unit is easy to set up and a good solution for storing quick commands.
