XP Pen Innovator 16 Review

XP Pen sent me their display tablet, the Innovator 16, last month. To truly test the tablet, I made this colorful artwork from start to finish. So far, this tablet exceeded my expectations and it looks like this will be my new main tool in making art! I’ll elaborate below.

I’ve been using an old Intuos 3 pen tablet for the past 10 years. I have been satisfied using it since I can already do all my work with it. I haven’t considered getting a display tablet because I thought I didn’t need to fix something that isn’t broken. When I tried the XP Pen Innovator 16, I jumped straight into work with it and it was a pleasant experience. The 15.6 inch display is an adequate working area but the Photoshop buttons can be a bit small. I got used to it eventually.

The tablet is only 9mm thick and it is lighter than it looks. Setting it up just took a few minutes because it only needs one cable that splits into 2 usbs and 1 HDMI connector. You don’t need to plug it into a separate power and it just runs well over USB. This is great for portability.

It includes a basic stand although it’s angled too low. I recommend putting a book behind it so you can adjust the height. A better solution would be to get a tabletop easel or one of those adjustable laptop stands.

The colors are wonderful! I did not need to do any calibration other than set the brightness to 100. Here is a comparison with 2 Dell Ultrasharps at the top and an Ipad Pro at the right side. There is almost no color or value difference. The screen also doesn’t get warm and it’s possible to work on this even on a hot day without using the drawing glove.

The tablet features two rings at the side and 8 express keys. I use the mechanical ring to adjust the zoom and virtual ring to adjust the brush size. The virtual ring is the black circle and it feels like a trackpad. I customized the express keys to easily switch between the brush, eyedropper, eraser, smudge, undo and redo commands faster.

The driver software is great! It actually WORKS! No more need to keep resetting stuff! YAY!

The pen feels a bit lighter than what I’m used to but it feels similar to my old tablet. It works without batteries. The package includes 8 extra nibs and a nice case.

When it comes to accuracy, it’s pretty good. My line work got better probably because of the increase in pressure sensitivity. I feel that they added a built in smoothing feature to it. I have been using Lazy Nezumi, a smoothing plugin, but it seems that I don’t need to activate it anymore.

The pen supports up to 60 degrees of tilt. This will be great for those who like to sketch and shade like using a pencil or for those who like to control the brush for calligraphy.

Here are other contents of the package. There’s a drawing glove, a cloth, a usb extension cable if you need to plug it into the socket when you only have one USB slot available. I got the anniversary edition so it also has these other items from their brand like a keychain, a pen, a postcard set, and some stickers of their mascot.