This is the XP-Pen Artist 15.6 Pro, NOT to be confused with the regular 15.6 or the 16
Pro, even though the 16 Pro happens to be exactly 15.6 in diagonal - which is the same
size as this tablet, the Artist Display 15.6 Pro.
What is the difference?
This 15.6 Pro has significantly better color quality than its non-Pro counterpart, the
pen supports tilt, there is a scroll wheel, and it comes with a stand.
Compare the 15.6 Pro with the 16 Pro, and you actually lose the scroll wheel and the
tablet stand for a very slight improvement in color quality and report rate - which is
how often the tablet sends pen position data to your computer.to
Now I haven’t tested the 16, but to me the 15.6 Pro is a much better deal.
I’d rather have a scroll wheel, which is like getting 4 extra shortcut buttons, than
marginally better color.
The color on the 15.6 Pro is fantastic as is.
So let me walk you through how to set this tablet up along with its physical features
and then I’ll get to the review part.
First thing in the box is the tablet itself.
Remove the plastic wrap and you will see a tab to remove the screen’s packaging cover.
Pull that off.
The stand is next, part number AC 41 if you need a replacement.
Hold it, name side facing up and push down with your thumbs hard to open it.
Then pull the flap open more until it locks in place.
It’s a budget plastic stand, so you only get the one drawing angle out of it.
Twist open the pen capsule to get the pen.
The bottom serves as a stand.
The other side of the capsule has 8 extra pen tips for replacement when the one in the
pen wears down.
This is a magic pen, no batteries, no USB charging.
It has 2 shortcut buttons and is almost exactly the same as its Wacom counterpart, shown here,
except the XP-Pen has no eraser bottom.
By the way, I do not recommend drawing on tablets from one brand with pens from a different
brand.
I’ve scratched tablets this way.
The other pieces you get: a manual, warranty card, cleaning cloth, artist glove, adaptor
cable for MAC computers, tablet-to-USB-HDMI-power cable, USB extension cord, four power plug
options for various countries.
To use the international converters, close the pins on the main box, get the pin shape
you need, and slide it into the closed pins.
Here is everything in the box.
As you can see, the tablet itself has 8 shortcut buttons and a scroll wheel that allows up
to 5 different functions.
The wheel clicks as you turn it and offers a little more resistance than other XP-Pen
models, which gives you a better feel for what you are doing with it.
The side of the tablet has the power button and a quick switch for brightness adjustment.
The screen itself has a finish that gets rid of the slippery, glossy feel of glass.
Overall with this tablet I see that XP-Pen continues to have a better build quality compared
to Huion and Gaomon.
To plug your tablet in, take the big cable, get the long end with the small oval-shaped
mouth and plug it into the side of the tablet.
There is no up or down side on that cable so plug it in whichever way its facing.
Next, plug the red USB end into the USB extension cord because you will probably need it.
Then plug the power block to the end of that.
If you don’t need the extension cord, you can plug the red end right into the power
block.
Last, plug the other USB cord and the HDMI cords into your computer.
This tablet will not work unless both the USB and HDMI cords are plugged in.
If you have a MAC, use the white adaptor on the HDMI end.
When you plug the tablet in, if you had a dual display setup before, some windows might
go missing.
If this happens turn the tablet on, even if you haven’t installed its drivers yet.
Then you will see your missing windows and be able to drag them back.
Uninstall any old tablet drivers.
If you have to uninstall something, restart your computer.
Go to xp-pen.com/download.
Download the correct driver - I’m using Windows.
Unzip, double click, install.
Restart your computer.
Turn the tablet on.
If at this point, or at any point in the future you notice things are displaying strange on
your tablet, or the pen is being weird, right click the desktop and go to Display Settings.
Set scale and layout to 100%.
You can also choose if you want your tablet to show a copy of your monitor (duplicate
displays), and you can change whether your tablet is to the left or right of your monitor.
All that is left is to customize your tablet settings.
Double click the desktop icon.
The first thing you want to do is click the Calibrate button.
A screen appears on your tablet.
Click the center of the red X’s with your pen.
If you feel like it’s still off, do it again until satisfied.
To the side of that is Display Settings, where you can change the color settings of your
tablet, and, if you are left-handed, rotate the tablet screen 180 degrees so you can pick
it up and turn it to get the buttons out of your way.
Express Keys is where you can program the shortcut buttons and the scroll wheel.
To be able to switch between scroll wheel modes, set one of the shortcut buttons to
KL/KR Mode Switch.
Now when you press that button the scroll wheel switches to its next setting.
The other side of this window allows you to choose your pen shortcut buttons and customize
pen pressure.
This window needs to be on the tablet and you have to press inside of it to see the
blue pressure test bar appear.
Once finished, it’s a good idea to save your settings with Export Configuration.
You can load saved settings with Import Configuration.
You’re all set!
Now, for the review.
The tablet worked in every program I have, a really good sign it’ll probably work in
most free painting software too.
The product page says it’s also compatible with Clip Studio, Corel Painter, Maya, Mudbox,
and ZBrush.
Since I’m so used to tablets that offer very little pen resistance, I was surprised
by how much resistance there was between the pen and the screen due to the special coating
on the screen.
I think most people will enjoy the resistance versus tablets that have smooth glass surfaces.
The tablet is somewhat insensitive.
You can literally have the pen on the screen and draw a line and it won’t show up if
your touch is light enough.
I am not a heavy-handed artist, so again, this was a surprise and a bit frustrating
right off the bat.
But you adapt to it.
Of course this also means when trying to click things with the pen, sometimes my pathetic
tap was not enough to activate.
So I’d have to go back and tap again to get the button or whatever it was to go.
Once I got past that activation point the pressure sensitivity was great.
As you can see, no problems getting lots of line width variation.
You just have to press harder than you’d expect if you’re used to a different tablet.
Of course the lines aren’t perfect.
Same as with other reasonably-priced tablets, there is a little bit of funkiness on the
way the line comes to a tip on fast strokes.
The pen supports tilt.
Most artists never use tilt, so it’s not a big deal, but it is there.
Here you see the tilt function letting me change the direction of the brush by tilting
the pen in different directions.
The default setting for one of the pen buttons is to switch between pen and eraser.
In Photoshop this is great.
In SAI, when you switch to the eraser you can’t switch back to the brush.
The problem with this is once you activate eraser mode with the pen button, when you
click back to the brush it might suddenly seem really difficult to make nice strokes.
This is because the pen still thinks its in eraser mode.
Similar problem with Toon Boom - if eraser mode is active, none of your tools work.
In summary, if your pen is acting strange in an art program where the eraser/brush pen
button doesn’t work right, try clicking that button.
You might have been in eraser mode.
Once in the middle of my testing session the tablet decided it was going to map itself
to the other monitor.
Restarting the computer fixed the problem.
If you keep your computer on and turn the tablet off, the tablet monitor is still technically
live.
In a way this is nice because you can turn the tablet off and back on again and it’ll
work fine without having to restart your computer (an issue I have with my Cintiq), but on the
other hand all of the windows over there stay over there.
So you might open Photoshop and it disappears because it’s on the monitor that’s off.
You can turn the tablet on and drag things back, or just right click >> Display Settings
>> show only on X to get everything back.
Just remember to fix your display settings afterward or when your tablet is on you’ll
get nothing.
That wraps up this review.
The XP-Pen Artist 15.6 is the best non-Wacom screen tablet I have used so far.
You can see all of my tablet reviews at ScribbleKibble.com on the episodes page.
Just click the “Product Reviews” button.
I will have a general help video about how to decide which tablet to get coming out some
time this year.