Deco Pro Medium

DO THE MATH Is a drawing tablet a third of the price of an equivalent Wacom only as third as good? We test XP-Pen’s latest device to find out

For many artists, there’s only been one reliable name in tablets: Wacom. However, over the past few years, companies such as XP-Pen, Huion and GAOMON have released a range of products in an attempt to usurp Wacom’s dominance in the tablet market. We were keen to find out if XP-Pen’s Deco Pro Medium could hold its own against a similarly specced Wacom tablet.

To XP-Pen’s credit, if someone had stuck Wacom’s logo on to the Deco Pro Medium, then in terms of the physical design of the device we might not have noticed anything different. The tablet is solid and the drawing surface feels smooth. It’s not quite as ‘gritty’ as a Wacom, but more than serviceable. Although we weren’t wholly convinced by the taper of the Pen that’s supplied with the tablet, on the whole we were impressed with the hardware straight out of the box.

LARGE DRAWING AREA

The 16:9 drawing area of XP-Pen’s device measures 11x6 inches and is approximately the same size as a similarly sized Wacom Intuos Pro. Placed on a desk and the Deco Pro Medium definitely feels shorter and less ‘massive’, though. This could be down to the metal finish on the side of the tablet that gives the Deco Pro Medium a high-end appearance.