Huion recently made it’s first attempt at an Android drawing tablet and released the Kamvas Slate 10. I’m really interested to see drawing tablet brands stepping into the standalone device genre. Huion seemed to do well with their recent Kamvas Studio 16, a Windows device akin to a Surface. However, the price may be something of a deterrent. Now, they are coming with something far more affordable, and powered by Android. It’s aimed at kids, and that is probably appropriate. Unfortunately, it doesn’t offer anything special as a Huion device, but that doesn’t mean it’s unusable. Let’s take a closer look at the Huion Kamvas Slate 10.

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This tablet was not sent to me by Huion, nor did they request this review. I purchased the device myself out of curiosity and to provide a valuable review for our readers. If you have any questions, feel free to drop a comment at the bottom of this post.

Box Contents

Inside the box you will find:

• The tablet
• folding case
• battery-powered stylus
• USB-A to USB-C charging cable
• a charging block
• SIM ejector
• spare pen nib
• quick start guide

Kamvas Slate 10 Specs

The important specification for the Kamvas Slate 10 tablet are:

• Display: 10.1″
• Resolution: 1920 x 1200 (16:10)
• Tablet size: 243 x 161 x 8.6 mm
• Weight: 575g
• Memory: 128GB (storage) and 8GB RAM
• SD slot: Yes
  
• Pen: HS200 Active Capacitive Stylus
• Pressure levels: 4096
• Tilt: 60 degrees
  
• Android version 12 (upgrades unclear)

Body of the tablet

The tablet is a little heavier than I expected for a 10.1″ tablet coming in at 575 grams. The back of the body is a textured metal surface, and there’s a bump in one corner for the 13MP camera. On the front or display side there is a bit of a thick bezel but it’s not excessive. There is also a 5MP front-facing camera on the long side.

Along the top short side, there are the power and volume buttons. On the opposite short side, there’s a USB-C slot (USB 2,0), SD card tray, and 3.5mm audio jack

You’ll also find a pogo pin connector along one side presumably for a keyboard that is not available through the Huion website..

Kamvas Slate 10 Display

The display on the Kamvas Slate is IPS LCD with a 1920 x 1200 resolution. It’s not bad. Pretty standard for a tablet of this size and price. The display was crisp and bright enough for indoor use. You may need a spot in the shade if you intend to draw outdoors though.

Colour-wise, it offers 90% sRGB and 66% Adobe RGB color gamut, and a 1000:1 contrast ratio. These specs are fine for a cheaper tablet like this as it would be used as more of an on-the-go digital sketchbook rather than for professional work that demands good colour accuracy.

Case

There is a case included with the Kamvas Slate 10 that allows for two different configurations of the tablet in landscape mode.

There is a flap along the side that folds over when you close the case, and has a slot for you to slide your pen into on the inside.

The pen

The Kamvas 10 Slate comes with a pen included. It’s battery-powered and will need charging from time to time. There is no way to view how much battery life it has on the tablet, but there is a pulsing red light in the middle of the pen buttons when it’s running low.

The HS200 stylus is also only a USI 2.0 (Universal Stylus Initiative) pen and does not actually have Huion’s own recent pen tech in it. This also works with some Chromebooks and other USI 2.0 compatible devices.

There are two buttons along the side of the pen which can be customized in some programs. In Infinite Painter for example, I use the front button to colorpick, while the second button switches between brush and blending tool.

The pen nib is hard plastic, so drawing on the glassy display, there’s no real friction like you’d get with a matte screen protector. You can purchase one of these off of the Huion website.

Line Test

Drawing with the pen is pretty average. There is some rather noticable wave to the lines which is disappointing to see. As you draw faster lines, it is less of a problem, sometimes. You can, to a degree, knock this out with some added smoothing or stabilization if your drawing app offers it.

Adding smoothing can impact the performance of the app on your device though if you add too much, and it’s normal for your line to lag behind your cursor a bit.

Drawing lines from thin to thick is fine but from thick to thin there can be quite a dramatic jump in line weight. There was some shoestringing in the lines too.

The tilt response was okay but seemed to work better at some angles than others.

Taking notes with this though is quite fine. I have no issues recommending it for that purpose.

When it comes to line drawing, I’d rather recommend the Galaxy Tab S6 Lite which delivers great line quality with it’s S Pen.

App Compatibility

I tested various popular drawing apps, and the Kamvas Slate appears compatible with all of them. However, some are better to use than others, especially considering the small display size.

Krita

The interface of Krita takes up a lot of screen space. I felt that the line wobble was more apparent in this app too, and the smoothing didn’t fully solve it.

Clip Studio Paint

CSP on the other hand, has a relatively new Simple Mode which really slims down the UI to something much more appropriate for mobile tablets. This too has smoothing options available.

Infinite Painter

Infinite Painter and Artflow let you hide the UI completely if you want to, hiding and showing with a touch gesture.

In Infinite Painter, I was surprised by how many layers I could get when creating an A2 canvas at 240 DPI, however the app immediately crashed when trying to draw a line on a canvas that big. But this is not a high-performing device, and the market for this kind of tablet isn’t going to need such high resolution canvases.

Magma

Of course, I had to test Magma as well, to see if I could use the Kamvas Slate 10 to draw with friends. Provided your canvas is not bigger than 1920 x 1080, you shouldn’t have an issue. Performance really dips on larger canvases. Line quality was still noticeably poor even with some stabilization added.

Other apps tested include: Ibix Paint X, HiPaint, Sketchbook and Artflow. The pen seemed to respond normally in each.

Painting with it

Painting with the Kamvas Slate 10 isn’t all that bad. The issues with the line quality don’t really apply when you’re using large brush strokes and shapes of colour.

The tablet does recognize the hovering pen which is nice. So, in apps that support hover and display the brush shape as the cursor, you can better predict what your brush will do.

The size of the tablet is a bit small though, so I did feel cramped painting on the Slate and the case didn’t feel adequately stable to support all the hand movement, but it was fine. Some apps will be more comfortable to use than others owing to how their user interface is designed.

Trying the split screen approach really adds to that cramped feeling, so if you want to have reference, an app that has it’s own reference window, like Infinite Painter is recommended.

While painting on it generally felt fine, the overall performance does not feel quite as snappy as I’d like. Perhaps I notice it more because of working primarily with an iPad Pro and the Galaxy Tab S9FE.

There was another issue of brush strokes not registering sometimes. This seemed to happen more if I rest the side of my hand on the tablet while drawing. That can get quite frustrating so the trick is to draw without resting your hand down, much like a traditional painter using his brush on a real canvas.

Conclusion

Overall, the Huion Kamvas Slate 10 is an average tablet that fails to impress. I don’t see any reason to take this over something else like the Tab S6 Lite (which I am more likely to recommend and it’s often on sale for a great price). Coming from a drawing tablet brand that has got some great pen technology and has produced some really good quality devices recently, I was disappointed by this one. I do however hope that Huion makes another attempt at an Android tablet. What I would like to see though, is for them to aim at something more mid-tier that could compete around the the level of an iPad and that really considers what a beginner artist’s needs are.

That said, I was able to paint and do studies just fine with it, save for the odd missed marks. For a youngster getting their first tablet, this is probably fine. It’s still a versatile device that you can use for taking notes, sketching ideas, and consuming content.

For more serious beginner or hobby artists though, I’d gather a few more coins and consider some other options.

TLDR: Should you buy the Kamvas Slate 10?

Yes, if… you have limited budget and it’s for a young beginner.
No, if… you want to do neat line work or create high-resolution artworks.

Looking for something that is still affordable but is a step up in pen quality and performance? Check out my review of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9FE.