Drawing tablets (also known as graphics tablets or art tablets) aren’t just for digital creatives like graphic designers, artists, and photo editors. They’re useful for gamers, office workers, and teachers, too. 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, often called “pen tablets,” resemble a blank slab and pen that controls your on-screen cursor. Others, dubbed “display tablets,” include built-in screens, allowing users to draw directly onto the surface that they’re viewing.
Selecting the best drawing tablet comes down to personal preference and what you’ll be using it for. High-end display tablets that might be ideal for professional comic artists and animators aren’t the best choice if you’re just signing digital documents. 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. But in recent years, other brands, like Huion, XP-Pen, and Gaomon, have emerged that offer products with similar functionality (albeit with less reliable software and slightly lower build quality) at a fraction of Wacom’s lofty prices.
Some drawing tablets are small enough to fit into a backpack to take to work, school, or college. Others are larger than a typical computer monitor. The appeal for either (and every size in between) is dependent on your budget and what you’ll be using the tablet for.
Does the drawing tablet come with its own drivers and software? If so, how reliable are they, and how much customization do they allow? This won’t be at the forefront of novice users’ minds, but intermediate and experienced drawing tablet users know how frustrating buggy software can be when they’re working on a project. Wacom has become the gold standard manufacturer of drawing tablets because of the reliability of both its software and hardware, but other brands have started to catch up.
This only applies to drawing tablets with built-in screens (aka display tablets). Many can’t match the quality of a color-referencing computer monitor — something used mostly by photographers and videographers to ensure on-screen colors accurately reflect real-world footage for editing — but should still be able to reproduce a wide range of colors and tones across color spaces like RGB, sRGB, NTSC, and more. It also helps illustrators and graphic designers ensure specific brand colors are accurate and that projects are designed in high resolution for publishing to print or the web.
How many levels of pressure sensitivity (which makes lines thicker the harder you press) does it support? Are there buttons that can be mapped to different functions? How pleasant is it to handle for lengthy drawing sessions?