digitalartguide

Here's my definitive buyers guide for the best Drawing Art Pad that are just perfect for graphic designers, digital artists & illustrators of all levels.
When it comes to designing and illustrating, you need a powerful tablet that will keep up with the demands of your everyday projects. There are literally hundreds available on the market today, and this can make it overwhelming to choose the perfect tablet that won't fall short.

If you're thinking about looking for a new powerful tablet, our easy-to-follow buying guide will give you a good starting point. We'll go over the core criteria you want to ensure your new tablet has, and then we'll review the top 13 tablets for designers and illustrators with pros and cons and specifications so you can make an informed decision on which tablet is the best for you.

What to Look For In A Good Drawing Tablet

Active Area

Additional Features

Although these features aren't necessarily a need, they're important to consider when you're buying a tablet. These can be some of the useful parts like Hot Keys or multi-touch capabilities. They're designed to improve your overall experience and make your design process more seamless.

HotKeys

As tablets continue to evolve, it isn't unusual to have hotkeys or shortcut keys built right into the tablet. You can use these keys to save time and streamline your work process because you won't spend time looking for your most used apps. You can customize and program them to your favorite shortcuts, or some tablets automatically pull your most used shortcuts into the hotkeys.

Pressure Sensitivity

When someone buys a drawing tablet, they're usually buying them for a specific skill set. However, it all comes down to how sensitive the tablet is. Depending on your particular illustrating or drawing style, you want an ultra-sensitive and responsive drawing surface.

The pressure sensitivity is another big deal, and this is a hardware issue. Your pressure levels start out at around 300 and go up to around 3,000. Obviously, the higher your pressure levels are, the better your tablet can respond to you. Many tablets sit in the 1024 level range, and this is the optimal level for illustration and design.

Resolution

If you're someone who wants to make very high-resolution images with very sharp graphics, you want to pick a tablet with a higher LPI. This stands as lines per inch, and you can think of it as comparing HD to 4K. You know a clearer picture when you look at it, and a higher LPI will give this to you.

If you're thinking about buying a drawing tablet as a gift, you want to think about how in-depth drawings the person you're buying the tablet for makes. If you want to get them an ultimate sketching and drawing tablet, look for one with a higher LPI.

Scrollers

A scroller on your tablet will let you quickly maneuver from one point to another point quickly and easily. Also known as a scroll wheel, many tablets have this built-in today. You may not necessarily need this feature, but it is nice if you're looking considering going to school for graphic design or you're buying the tablet for someone who is going to school or works in graphic design.

Stylus

While you may think a stylus is a stylus, when it comes to a design or illustration tablet, this can't be further from the truth. You can choose from a battery-operated stylus or an electromagnetic resonance (EMR) stylus. These two styluses have several differences, but both of them are specially designed to mimic the feel of drawing with a normal pencil or pen.

A battery operated stylus is designed to be thicker because they have to hold the batteries to power them. They also have a finer point, and you use them for pen-to-tablet drawing. EMR style styluses rely on low energy levels that come from the pen's circuits, and this low energy reacts to the tablet's active area. These are thinner, but they usually have thicker points.

Support

You want to choose a tablet that comes with a strong support system. Whether you look for country-specific support, an easy-to-reach customer service line, or an interactive forum, all of these can improve your user experience. If you purchase a little-known tablet, you run the risk of not being able to get support when you need it if you have a problem with your tablet. This can be frustrating and disrupt your workflow until you solve whatever issue your tablet is having.

Connect Wireless or Wired

Many tablets come with wireless capabilities, and again, this is a personal choice. A wired tablet gives you less room to maneuver around as you work, and you'll have to be careful that you don't pull or tug at it. However, a wired tablet gives you a direct and steady connection to your monitor or workspace.

Wireless tablets are extremely popular as it allows you to move your tablet around freely without worrying about tugging or pulling on a cord. You do have to be careful about the distance from your tablet to your workspace because you won't necessarily have a steady connection.

Pen Displays

There are two basic tablet designs, and they are either flat models or on-screen models. There is a cost difference between them, but this really comes down to personal preference. An on-screen tablet will typically have the same LPI as a flat model. However, it can be an adjustment to draw on a tablet while you look at your PC or laptop screen. For other people, there is no other way to create and draw.

While some people prefer working in a way where screen and drawing surface separate, others prefer to draw directly on a screen. Here in particular, there are a growing number of options, and where you also want to take some time to check out multiple reviews on a few different products. Things you might want to consider before making your purchase include the screen resolution, colour accuracy, and whether or not its a fully laminated display.

The Brands