Could XPPEN’s Magic Drawing Pad, their first Android tablet, be a shift in the wind for standalone drawing tablets? For a long time, Apple’s iPad has generally been the go-to for digital artists on the move. There are great options for Android users too in the form of Samsung’s range of Tab S tablets, but illustrators and painters are not the primary market for for these devices. XPPEN, however, makes it clear who their Magic Drawing Pad is for by including features that specifically cater to mobile digital artists. It’s an exciting step, and one I have been looking forward to for a good while! Let’s take a closer look.
Note: XPPEN did not send me this device or ask for a review. As a traveling artist, this type of device does specifically interest me and I purchased it myself to review.
Highlights
- Anti-glare etched glass display
- XPPEN’s own X3 pen technology included
- Decent battery-life
- Good size for the price
Key Specs
- Display size: 12.2″
- Display resolution: 2160 x 1440
- Chipset: Mediatek MT8771 Octacore
- RAM: 8GB
- Storage: 256GB (expandable with SD card up to 512GB)
- Battery: 8000mAh
- Android Version 12
- Connectivity: WiFi, Bluetooth, USB-C 2,0
For full specs and more info, view the Magic Drawing Pad product page.
A little background…
Standalone devices have been getting better and more affordable over time, and for a lot of people, I think a tablet is likely to be their first computer. As mentioned earlier, iPads have become a popular choice for those looking to get into digital drawing. For many professionals too, the iPad Pro has become their main workhorse. They’re versatile and convenient and also not the only option.
In December 2023, XPPEN, together with Kantar (a market research company) released the Professional Drawing Tablet Computer Trends White Paper, analyzing trends in the market. They acknowledged in the paper that “there is still significant room for improvement in terms of professional drawing performance in the tablet market“. With that, they announced their upcoming mobile tablet to cater toward the trend of casual and portable creativity. They went on to showcase their Magic Drawing Pad at CES in January.
The Magic Drawing Pad also comes out of a partnership between TCL with their NXTPAPER tech and Hanvon UGEE, and it looks to hit the needs of digital artists who need portability, a quality pen experience, and who will be spending long hours in front of their screens.
Box Contents
When buying the Magic Drawing Pad, here’s what you can expect to find inside the box:
- the tablet
- clear case with solid rubber edging
- glove with some added padding
- pen – X3 Pro Pencil
- spare nibs – both plastic and felt
- quick start guide
- USB-C charging cable
The Tablet
The overall size of the Magic Drawing Pad is around 28 x 19cm and only 7mm thick. The back is a matte plastic and has a bump in one corner for the 13MP camera.
Along the sides in the same corner as the camera, you have the power button on the short side and the volume rocker on the longer side.
On the other end there is a USB 2.0 port and a slot for an SD card to get some extra storage. There are also 4 speakers.
On the front we have a really nice, large matte screen that we’ll get to in a moment. I didn’t notice any accumulation of fingerprints on the screen or the back while I handled it which is nice.
Along the long side on the front is an 8MP camera. Good placement knowing that a lot of users are likely to be working in landscape mode.
The display – a main feature
With a display is 12.2 inches, and a 3:2 ratio, the Magic Drawing Pad has a resolution of 1440 x 2160. That pixel density is actually higher than some other 12-13″ pen displays out there, such as my FHD Wacom One. It has a nano-etched display which they’re calling X-Paper.
X-Paper (NXTPAPER)
X-Paper, is in fact, TCL’s NXTPAPER technology, which has three main characteristics:
- Anti-glare and anti-fingerprint
- Paper-like feel which is great for drawing
- Blue-light reduction to reduce eyestrain
The anti-glare of the Magic Drawing Pad is really impressive, diffusing sharp lighting more than I’ve seen on any other tablet so far. This makes it great for working outdoors where you might get strong highlights and reflections, or even indoors with a bright light overhead.
When it comes to the drawing experience, this feels a lot like pen displays I’ve used so far, like the Wacom One 13 Touch, but it’s still very smooth to the touch.
Without any need for an additional matte screen protector, the surface of the Magic Drawing Pad gives just the right amount of resistance to the pen. I also switched out the plastic nibs for the felt ones right away, which adds more friction. It definitely gave a more pencil-on-paper feel which makes this a pleasure to draw on.
Being a digital painter or illustrator means long hours in front of the screen. Thankfully, the X-Paper/NXTPAPER technology is designed to improve eye comfort by having multiple layers of glass that filter out blue light that typically strains the eyes.
NXTVISION
Paired with NXTVISION, a display settings app for the Magic Drawing Pad and other devices in TCL’s NXTPAPER line, you can control the colour vibrance and temperature for different scenarios. In general, for drawing and painting, you’ll want to turn off the NXTVISION controls to see the colours of your painting more accurately. But if you’re just sketching, especially on a white canvas, the eye comfort mode is worth keeping on.
The X3 Pro Pencil – another highlight
Another stand-out feature of the Magic Drawing Pad is that X3 Pro Pencil that comes with it has XPPEN’s own X3 Pro chip inside. It has over 16k levels of pressure sensitivity which I think is a bit overkill, but it’s the mere 3 grams of initial activation force (IAF) required that lets you better experience that pressure range.
The IAF is how much force you actually need to apply for your device to start registering the pressure and draw a line. I’m really impressed with how the pen responds to very light pressure. I didn’t get any stutters or cut-outs with light lines, or experience issues of the line blowing out really quickly when adding more pressure. So, even with a large brush size, I can get a very wide and clean range of line weight.
What the Magic Drawing Pad is missing with the X3 Pro Pencil is tilt recognition. Other tablets like the Galaxy Tab with an S Pen, or iPad and Apple Pencil, even the Huion’s Kamvas Slate 10 with a USI stylus have this. It’s not a dealbreaker, but it would be nice to see this supported in the next iteration of the tablet.
There is one button along the side of the pen. This is programmable in some applications like Infinite Painter or Ibis Paint X where you could assign it to something like Undo or triggering the Eyedropper.
How X3 Pro Pencil differs from other pens
The X3 Pro Pencils is fairly similar in form to other pens that come with mobile tablets, but probably being closest to Samsung’s S Pen for the Tab S9FE.
Next to those two is the Apple Pencil 2 which is quite a bit heavier and the pen tip is a very different experience. The Apple Pencil lends itself much more to using like an actual pencil that is often tilted when drawing.
To the top right is the X3 Pro stylus that comes with the Deco Pro 2nd Gen. This is a more typical design for pro ranges of graphics tablets and pen displays. This pen also does happen to work with the Magic Drawing Pad.
The X3 Pro Stylus also works
Seeing as they share the same pen technology, I wanted to see if the X3 Pro stylus included with the Deco Pro Gen 2 would work on the Magic Drawing Pad. It does! Though you aren’t getting any additional features from it; only a more comfortable pen shape and a slightly different pressure curve.
The second pen button cannot be programmed and the eraser on back will not work here though.
I also tested the X3 Pro Roller stylus but it does now work at all with the Magic Drawing Pad.
A padded drawing glove
XPPEN often includes a drawing glove with their tablets, but this one is slightly different. To improve palm-rejection and prevent you making accidental marks on the canvas, this has extra padding along the side of the hand. Some apps have pretty good palm rejection built-in, but others are a bit more sensitive, and in those cases, the glove works well.
Drawing apps for the Magic Drawing Pad
Pre-installed apps
The Magic Drawing Pad comes with Ibis Paint X and Medibang pre-installed already. These aren’t my preferred options, but you have the Google Play store to access a wide range of others.
Recommended apps for Magic Drawing Pad
My go-to apps on mobile are Infinite Painter, Clip Studio Paint, and Sketchbook. The UI is well designed for these devices. Krita works but I find the UI is just not suitable for mobile if you want to get into customizing tools. Infinite Painter did show some signs of sluggishness after a while with a high-res painting on the Magic Drawing Pad.
Of course Magma works too for drawing with your friends. I find that the performance wasn’t great on there though with bigger canvases (around 2k+).
Having a larger display means that you can split your screen for reference while you draw. RefCanvas is a great app for big reference board of multiple images that you can pan around.
The drawing experience
The pen performance here is really impressive. Unlike Huion’s Kamvas Slate 10 (which uses a USI stylus), XPPEN uses their own X3 EMR tech here and it works really well’s accurate and responsive. I’d say it’s on par with their regular drawing tablets minus the tilt recognition which is not supported.
Using a 50px round brush, I was able to get a good range of line weight, and the transitions between thick and thin were perfectly smooth. There was no wobble to the line except for what would come from my own hand movement. I got the same performance from the X3 Pro Pencil and the X3 Pro Stylus, though the later was more comfortable and I felt I could get even lighter lines more easily (bottom left in this image).
There were some alignment issues upon the first release of this tablet, but when I eventually got mine, the problem seemed to be resolved. Cursor and pen tip were perfectly aligned. If yours is slightly off though, you can go into the cursor offset settings on the tablet to adjust it the way you like.
Portability – the Magic Drawing Pad
The weight of the tablet is only 600grams, and of course, that is one part of what makes this easy to just stick in your bag and take it with you anywhere.
With the case, you can store your pen behind the tablet, where it fits in quite firmly. It definitely won’t pop out unnoticed. The case also offers some solid protection around the corners. What is missing however, is a front cover to protect the screen. The reason I think this is important is because your bag often has other things stuffed into it that could potentially scratch the surface. Of course, it does depend on the bag and some have dedicated compartments to keep your tablet separate from other items. I still think a folding case is a product they should consider next time.
Using the tablet outdoors, the light diffusion was great and I didn’t find myself needing to angle the tablet around to avoid harsh reflections. Though it was an overcast day when I went out with it.
Another key part of portability with a device like this is it’s battery-life. XPPEN claims that you can get 13 hours of use out of the 8000mAh battery at 30% brightness. With the Magic Drawing Pad at full brightness, I was at 70% after 2 hours of drawing on it, which is pretty good. Most of us probably carry a battery bank with us anyway, so you can extend this if needed while on the move without a power outlet nearby.
Use the Magic Drawing Pad with your computer
Traveling with both a laptop and tablet, I like that I can actually pair these together so that the tablet becomes an extended monitor. Not only that, but it becomes a complete pen display for painting in your desktop software.
The Magic Drawing Pad comes with Spacedesk preinstalled which will let you connect wirelessly or over USB with your computer. You’ll have to download Spacedesk for your PC though (but it’s free). It worked well and supported touch and the pressure input of the pen.
EasyCanvas or SuperDisplay are also alternatives for the same functionality. EasyCanvas will let you customize some on-screen shortcut buttons and the pressure curve.
Accessories to consider
The Magic Drawing Pad comes with the essentials but there are some extra purchases worth considering for a better experience.
The first accessory, which I would say is essential, is a stand. While it’s nice to sit on the couch drawing, I’m often working at my desk. A good stand will give you a more comfortable drawing angle for those longer sessions. I’m using a foldable 2-level one. It’s a bit heavy and excessive for this purpose alone, but I use it for my laptop as well to get it up at a better height. You can also check out XPPEN’s own tablet stands on their store.
If you want to use this in more of a computer format, then you’ll want to consider a keyboard too for typing and note taking (if you prefer to type rather than write). The on-screen keyboard tends to take up a lot of space on the screen (as the case with most tablets). XPPEN pen also just released the Magic Drawing Pad Smart Keyboard for $80 on their store.
If you don’t want a keyboard, but still want to access keyboard shortcuts in your favourite drawing apps, there is a more compact option in the 8BitDo Micro controller.
Does the ACK05 Remote work with the Magic Drawing Pad
Speaking of shortcut controllers, I decided to try pairing XPPEN’s own wireless ACK05 remote with their Android tablet but it does not work. While this is not really necessary for mobile drawing apps which are often well optimized for the pen and touch experience, many apps (such as CSP and Magma) do have keyboard shortcuts and they can really speed up your workflow.
Is the Magic Drawing Pad worth it
Overall the Magic Drawing Pad gets a thumbs up from me. I think XPPEN has done well here with their first Android tablet offering, and I look forward to seeing another iteration of it. The drawing experience was definitely enjoyable and you’re getting a good-sized screen, that’s easy on the eyes (quite literally), at a pretty affordable price. But there is still room for a couple of improvements that would make this a clear winner over tablets from other brands in the same price category. For example, one is likely to get better overall performance from Tab S9FE Plus.
What I hope to see next
I’d like to see XPPEN, or perhaps the pro-focused Xencelabs rather, aim higher with a standalone product that is aimed at the more serious or professional-level artist. I’m talking iPad Pro competition here, but what might that look like?
- Something that with higher performance to handle large, high-resolution paintings, perhaps even some decent animation.
- Full-feature stylus support – so not just great pressure sensitivity but tilt as well. Buttons and eraser functions are probably a bit more complex to support when it comes to Android, but through partnerships with high quality apps like Infinite Painter and Clip Studio Pain, I think this could be viable.
- A new form of pencil – with tilt support, the option of a stylus that has a similar form to the Apple Pencil 2 would be interesting. This would be to mimic the experience of drawing with a pencil that lets you really angle the pen for different kinds of mark.
- Size variants – potentially 14″ for those who are more likely to use the same device at home/work and on the go.
- Lastly, controller support – While many mobile apps are designed more towards touch gestures, some still have a wide range of keyboard shortcuts. This isn’t essential, but a nice-to-have.
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