XP-Pen’s Deco Pro is a step up for this long time Wacom Bamboo user. I bought this after having used my bamboo tablet for almost a decade now and I decided it was time for an upgrade. After seeing some artists I follow talk about XP-Pen, I looked them up and found the Deco Pro was going to be released soon and that pre-orders get a good discount, so I jumped on the chance and ordered it. I do not regret that decision.
Product Description
XP-PEN Deco Pro Graphics Tablet , the XP-Pen’s latest tablet release! Makes its debut as the 2019 Red Dot Design Award Winner and the 2018 Good Design Award Winner. The Deco Pro Small features an 9×5 inch working area, giving you a bigger canvas for your creations. Made with an aluminum casing and featuring a curved form as thin as 7mm, making it smooth to use and sleek in appearance.
XP-PEN Deco Pro features the new groundbreaking double wheel interface combines a mechanical and virtual wheel that makes it possible to perform multiple actions with one hand, it’s easier and quicker than ever to capture, write, draw, and edit. The roller wheel comes equipped with an indicator light and adjustable brightness level, letting you stay immersed in your creation even in dim light. It also features 8 responsive shortcut keys, giving you instant access to specific functions.
The XP-Pen Deco Pro supports up to 60 degrees of tilt function! Quickly and easily responding to the way your hand naturally moves. Tilt function also delivers smoother and more natural transitions between lines and strokes while also giving you the ability to add shading to your creation. And the newly designed A41 battery-free stylus, no batteries or charging is ever required. There are no clumsy cords for charging and no extra cost for an extra pen.
Deco Pro Small with up to 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity, the Deco Pro provides you precise control and accuracy. Create fine lines in a fluid and incredibly natural experience. Deco Pro comes with a multi-function pen holder to keep your pen and pen nibs safe. You can use it as a pen stand or as a case to keep your pen secure anywhere you go.
Android Phones and Tablets Supported-The XP-Pen Deco Pro Small is compatible with Windows 7/8/10, Mac OS X 10.10 or above and Android devices 6.0 or above, and works with most major creative software including Photoshop, SAI, Painter, Illustrator, Clip Studio, and more. XP-Pen provides a one-year warranty [warranty only valid under the situation that damage is not caused by man-made] and lifetime technical support for all our pen tablets/displays .
My package came with all the items described in the store listing. Pen, pen case and holder, nibs, adapters, cable, drawing glove, and, of course, the tablet itself.
The XP-Pen Deco Pro Drawing tablet is pretty weighty, a nice kind of weight that can be attributed to the casing. The size of the tablet itself is big despite me getting the smaller version, which those with portability or desk space in mind may scrutinize. However, I think this can be offset by the very slim form the tablet takes. I definitely don’t mind that the tablet is big, my bamboo was smaller which meant a smaller work area. The tablet has programmable buttons, which really should be standard for any drawing tablet. What is new and interesting to me, however, is the dial which can also be programmed to fit your dialable needs. Need to resize your brush? The dial is there for you. Need to zoom in and out? The dial can do that for you. Rotation? The dial has you covered. In addition, the top of the dial acts as a touchpad, like the ones you find on a laptop, so if you need to quickly switch to a mouse because the pen is too awkward for the task being performed, you have a touchpad for that.
The pen has a brush handle shape to it, which artists will appreciate. It is battery-less, which I certainly appreciate, and comes with two buttons as stated in the store description; one button is for right-clicking (or whatever else you need it to be) and one button is for switching between pen and eraser, something that should work with any drawing program. The tilting function is something I had never experienced before this and I am still in the process of figuring out how I can use it so I will update this review as soon as I have a clearer grasp on tilt.
Installation is easy as plugging it in and getting the right drivers for your computer. The package comes with instructions on how to find the drivers, including a scannable QR code for those that have a scanning app on their phone.
The build quality is immediately apparent. I don’t have any past experience to go on but I had no trouble using the stylus/tablet to perform my desired actions.
Drawing Experience
I Use this tablet to edit my vacation photographs (e.g. remove small reflections caused by taking photos through a window of a transportation vehicle; a bus, train or boat). I initially tried editing using Gimp with a trackball mouse but had overall trouble with precise cursor control as well as keeping the cursor motion strait when needed. This device solved that problem and more.
It did take a couple of hours to figure how to get the dial and a few of the shortcuts to work properly because Gimp uses different keyboard shortcuts than the tablet defaults. I ended up changing them in Gimp to match the defaults because I couldn’t get a tablet custom setup for Gimp to completely work. It took a while before I figured out that I needed to use the ‘+’ and ‘-‘ keys on the keypad because using the [Shift] key (for ‘+’) wreaked havoc in the custom setup for zoom in and zoom out just didn’t work. I never could get the pen button to switch between pen and eraser.
After solving the setup issue, the tablet, dial and pen worked nicely and having the 8 programmable buttons really streamlined the editing process, I especially like the [Cntrl]+Z (Undo) button. Being a newbie, it will take a while to become proficient at photo editing and I think this tablet will facilitate the process. I can only imagine what a professional could do with this particular graphics drawing tablet.
I don’t understand, however, why you would want to use a tablet with a smart phone. I wouldn’t think the related apps would be very fast or feature based enough to be very useful.
And for those that are wondering, yes this tablet works on Android devices. One of the first things I did was to test this tablet on my phone for compatibility and I found that it worked! While I don’t see myself doing too many projects on my phone, it is definitely a pro to be able to do doodles on a portable device like my phone.
The only nitpick I have for the tablet can be attributed to having a new tablet or changing from Wacom to a competitor. The feeling of using the Deco Pro as opposed to my Bamboo was very notable and some users may feel growing pains from switching brands. However, the feeling is only apparent for the first day. After that, if you’re still using it, chances are you don’t notice a thing. I certainly didn’t when I was working on my projects.
All in all, I very much like this tablet and recommend it for both new and seasoned digital artists.
more details you can visit Deco Pro official site here: https://www.xp-pen.com/product/432.html
tianxin