The Ugee M708 graphics tablet offers a good working area for the beginner digital artist at an affordable price. Ugee sent me the M708 tablet to review, and it’s the first of their devices that I’m using, so let’s take a closer look.
Disclosure: Ugee did send me the tablet to review, however this is not a sponsored review and the thoughts are my own. I tested it for about three weeks doing various tasks including hosting painting live streams and working in different software.
Key points
- Big size
- 8 express keys
- Buttons can stick
- Can sound flimsy
Price ~50-60USD
In the box:
- M708 Tablet
- P01 stylus
- Pen stand
- 8x Replacement nibs
- Drawing glove
- USB-A to Micro-USB
- Quick start guide
Tablet
The first thing to note about the M708 drawing tablet is that it is a screenless device. So you’re going to be looking up at your computer monitor while your hand and pen move on the tablet surface in front of you. This can take some time to get used to. If you haven’t used a device like this before, then you might want to read up a little to see if a screenless or display tablet is better for you.
The Ugee M708 tablet has a nice 10″ x 6″ active area. This is a great size to work on and big enough to draw with more of your arm than just the wrist. Normally I recommend sizes at around 8 x 5” or 10 x 6” for beginners, even though I started out on smaller.
The overall size of the tablet is 36 x 21cm. It probably wouldn’t work off to the side of your laptop in place of your mouse, but placed in front, it doesn’t push the keyboard too far away. It all depends on your setup though.
Underneath, you will find rubber pads in each corner to stop the tablet from sliding around.
Express keys
There are 8 express keys along the side with a thin indicator light separating them in the middle. This shines blue when you bring your pen down to the surface or press one of the buttons
It’s plastic all around, but the feel of the plastic varies between the working area, the frame, and the buttons. The buttons are a more glossy plastic that feels distinctly different to the body around it.
Personally I’m not a fan of these express keys. The buttons aren’t distinctly raised from the body, and I did find that they get stuck sometimes when pressed towards the side rather than in the middle. It’s not a big deal so long as you press the buttons in the middle, but this can be frustrating if you don’t know why you can’t seem to switch tools.
The Pen
The P01 stylus that comes with Ugee’s M708 is battery-free, and the pen has two programmable buttons on the side.
The weight feels fairly evenly distributed across the pen.The nibs are a hard plastic and there are 8 replacements inside the pen holder.
The pen holder is a good weight and isn’t going to topple over when you rest your pen in it.
The hard plastic nibs will quickly start to leave light scratch marks on the surface of the tablet. This is completely expected though and doesn’t impact the drawing experience.
Driver
To connect your Ugee tablet to the computer, you’ll first need to download the driver from their website. Then you can plug in your cable as start customizing your tablet’s setting. Driver is pretty straightforward. Colourful and easy to find your way around. The tablet driver application may look a little different in this review of the Ugee M708 than some older ones where the driver still had a very similar layout to that of XPPEN’s.
You can customise all the express keys on the M708 tablet and the two pen buttons. Many artists work in multiple applications. Buttons can be set to do things like switch between monitors, or between brush and eraser, and activate precision mode.
Thankfully, you can set your express keys in different ways for each program that you use.
The tablet will work for left-handed users too, and you can adjust the rotation of the tablet in the settings. First hit the gear icon to open up additional tablet settings and the set the rotation to 180 degrees
What is the M708 compatible with?
I tested the Ugee M708 on a Windows 10 laptop for this review. It’s compatible with Windows 7 or later (including Windows 11), MacOS 10.10 or later, Chrome OS 88 or later, and Linux.
You can also the M708 drawing tablet with your Android device if you have the appropriate adaptor for the USB-A. I tested this with a Xiaomi 11T Pro and found that a cursor didn’t appear. I’ve had this with a couple of other tablets when paired with this phone, but on a different Xiaomi phone, it worked fine. If this happens to you, there are apps that still show the brush shape so that you can see where you’re drawing.
You do not need to download any drivers to use the tablet with your phone.
Pen test
To test the pen, I did the usual pressure tests, doing spirals, dots, quick lines and slow diagonal lines. Overall, the pen performance was good and I have no complaints. Again, it;s not a premium pen experience, but certainly good enough with no weird behaviours. And that is what you want: consistent, predictable behaviour from your pen.
Painting with Ugee M708
Painting with the Ugee M708 drawing tablet for this review has been a pretty easy and comfortable experience. Of course, this does not feel like a more premium device, and drawing and painting doesn’t feel as good as something like Huion’s Insprioy Giano, but I really had no trouble diving right into my usual painting tasks.
I did run into some quirks along the way. As mentioned already, the express keys occasionally got stuck and would need a little wiggle to release. I use my keyboard for shortcuts most of the time though, so this is still a minor issue for my situation.
Sometimes, if I hadn’t used the tablet for a little while even though it was plugged in, the first press of a button seemed to reconnect the device and open the settings panel rather than perform that button’s action.
While painting in Magma, I found that using the express keys to adjust brush size was a bit unreliable and would register infrequently. In desktop software like Clip Studio Paint though, I did not notice this problem.
None of this is deal-breaking though. The important things to me are around the size and and general pen performance, and in both of these categories, I was happy.
So should you buy it?
If you are a beginner with a limited budget, then based on this review, I’d say that the Ugee M708 tablet has all that you’d need: a decent-sized active area and a reliable pen experience. At under US$60, this tablet makes a fairly good option for a beginner who shouldn’t be spending too much on their first device.
If you use the following codes when purchasing from AmazonUS or AmazonUK, you can get an additional 10% off:
Amazon US Discount Code: 10A19HOU
Amazon UK Discount Code: QM3ZDZX2
You can also visit their global store site: https://shop.ugee.com/
