Short XP-Pen 22 review

After many years of wanting something like a Cintiq I gave in recently and bought a XP-Pen 22 inch monitor/tablet. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015F ... UTF8&psc=1 I have threatened to build one but never did but I am glad I waited. At $600 it is a third of the price of an equivalent Cintiq. I had the money to get a Cintiq but just couldn't justify it as I thought it was a rip off. Wacom is always too expensive.

Everything worked out of the box with no issues. The monitor doesn't appear to heat up as I had read. The stand that comes with it works great although I am considering putting it on a vesa mount arm I have laying around. Monitor quality seems to be that of a standard monitor. It is a bit dull compared to my 30 inch professional Dell (2560x1600) but this is a good thing as it's much easier on my eyes I am spoiled I guess but barely noticed when I turned off my main monitor.

Out of the box it works fine but has a really nice calibration set up. It works with:

1, Verve! It is very flowing with Verve and really easy for me to sketch now.

2. Photoshop CS6. No problems

3. Krita. ditto no problems

4. Zbrush. Once again no problems

5. Sculptris. It is an absolute joy in Sculptris

6. Sketchbook Pro 7. Againnnnn Wait. What's this? It's offset! Damn. Every stroke was offset by a quarter inch lol. I tried reinstalling the drivers, changing xp-pen settings. Nothing worked. I searched for updates from autodesk. Yes there is one. I go to it and the link is dead. So I went to the web site and find the only way to get their new sketchbook pro is to SUBSCRIBE!?? wth? lol So I downloaded the 15 day tryout to give it a try with XP-Pen and yes. It worked perfectly :p. This is rather annoying to me. Sketchbook Pro 7 works great with my Intuos. The problem is having 2 different tablets attached to the system :p Not something I want to do and besides I had already uninstalled Wacom.

My impressions throughout were favorable mostly. The change from a regular drawing tablet to a monitor tablet was a level up for me.

Final thoughts. If this tablet makes it through 2 years of me it will have been well worth the price paid

Tom

Hi Tartan, interesting, thanks for the review !

[Taron]

That's a brilliant review, Tom, THANKS!
I do love the idea of this sort of thing, but Wacom are insane with their prices. I mean, I can't justify buying a $600 thing right now, but if I switch over to selling software, which I will have to, I might just get enough to have something to invest again. I was dumb enough to invest $2000 in a Cintiq Companion for somebody, who so quickly showed to not care at all anyway...that was nicely frustrating. And even if I had 10 sparkly donate buttons all around, I would never make that much money back in my life. But I digress..

SO, yeah, great review and keep us in the loop, if anything changes!

heh TY Gbo and Taron I did start to have drivers issues this morning but think I have fixed the problems. Apparently an old Wacom driver that uninstall didn't affect was hanging up my XP Pen. It's taken me a bit of tinkering under the hood of win 10 but I believe I have resolved all issues. If it crops up again over the next few days under heavy use I may send it back which I really, really don't want to do.

Yeah $2,000 is entirely too much to pay for a tablet of any kind. Man. I would take it back from him and just use it to play with during boring movies or doctor's appointments

Tom

And the problem Really is solved now. My "driver" issues boiled down to one thing. They were caused by a very loose female housing of the usb connector on the XP-Pen monitor itself. It was letting the usb cord wiggle around and disconnect and also on occasion reconnect. The problem was solved with piece of duct tape (Yah I know. Right ) Almost a dot of tape that I placed on the sides, not the top or bottom of the usb cord male end. I connected the cord and it held firmly while allowing the signal to pass through. Sheesh. I wish I had figured that out before I ran through a Lot of hoops trying to solve the problem. Not a huge hardware issue as it turned out. Thank goodness. I am going to post a 4 star review at amazon instead of a 5 star which I would have done if it hadn't been for all the anxiety . Apparently this is not a common thing

True final thoughts. If anyone here goes out and buys one make sure all connections are secure. It's running great now

[Taron]

I think, any serious device only starts looking professional with a bit of duct tape! There ain't no way around it. You should see my headphones!
Your review here is already at a perfect place, of course. Thanks for the updates!