Xencelabs’ new display drawing tablet gives Wacom a run for its money

Graphics {hardware} producer Xencelabs has introduced the Pen Display 24 Studio Series, a new display drawing tablet designed for inventive professionals. The 24-inch display is the corporate’s first drawing tablet with a built-in display to hitch its vary of ordinary pen tablets and comes geared up with options that rival Wacom’s Cintiq sequence.

The largest benefit that Xencelabs has towards Wacom is affordability — at $1,899, the Pen Display 24 is significantly inexpensive than the $3,500 Wacom Cintiq Pro 27 and consists of equipment like a stand and a shortcut distant that Wacom doesn’t embrace as normal.

Like the Cintiq Pro 27, the Xencelabs Pen Display 24 options edge-to-edge tempered glass that’s been etched to offer friction for a extra pure drawing expertise and scale back glare in brightly lit environments. The glass display screen is bonded to the sensor with out an air hole to cut back parallax (that hole between the pen nib and the cursor), and there are three buttons with customizable LED backlighting positioned on the highest of the tablet’s in any other case uninterrupted floor, every of which will be programmed to rapidly entry system settings like pen sensitivity.

The display screen options a 3840 x 2160 decision, a 60Hz refresh charge, and 330 nits of brightness. It’s able to delivering as much as 1.07 billion colours, with 99 % Adobe RGB and 93 % DCI-P3 colour gamut protection. That’s moderately near what’s provided on the Wacom Cintiq Pro 27, which might make this a first rate various for people on a tighter finances. The colour accuracy and Pantone help may equally imply some creatives may get away with not needing a devoted reference monitor. And just like the Cintiq Pro 27, the Xencelabs Pen Display 24 can also be validated for Pantone and Pantone SkinTone for accuracy when reproducing Pantone colours and various pores and skin tones.

The massive bezels across the display aren’t precisely horny in comparison with these discovered on trendy standalone reference screens, however they serve an essential function, offering a sizable wrist relaxation and permitting customers to clip the included Quick Keys accent — Xencelabs’ various to Wacom’s ExpressKey Remote — on any aspect of the tablet with out overlaying the workspace space. The Quick Keys accent is actually a specialised, detachable macro pad that options an OLED display, eight programmable keys, and a programmable dial that may scroll by way of as much as 40 shortcuts in inventive purposes.

There are additionally two completely different pens included within the field to help completely different hand sizes and drawing preferences: the “3-Button Pen v2,” which resembles the Wacom Pro pen, and the “Thin Pen v2,” which options a slimmer design nearer to that of an Apple Pencil. Both pens have a built-in eraser on the top, 8192 ranges of stress sensitivity, and an preliminary activation stress that may be adjusted to as little as three grams.

The Pen Display 24 is fanless, comparatively light-weight (13 kilos versus the Cintiq Pro 27’s 16 kilos), and comes with a tilt stand that may be single-handedly adjusted between the angles of 16 and 72 levels. The tablet may also be mounted on a normal VESA mount arm, and Xencelabs mentioned a multi-axis stand that may freely orientate the tablet vertically or horizontally might be obtainable to buy individually (although no value or launch date has been talked about). Ports are positioned on the rear and embrace each HDMI and DisplayPort connections. Drivers can be found for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

There’s nothing right here that’s particularly revolutionary. The Xencelabs Pen Display 24 shares lots of the identical options because the Wacom Cintiq Pro 27, and Wacom has been setting the trade normal for display graphics tablets for years because it first launched the Cintiq sequence. Competitors have been making an attempt to match Wacom on high quality ever since, sometimes being extra inexpensive however not fairly as dependable or function packed.

But Xencelabs is price maintaining a tally of. Its normal pen drawing tablets had been extraordinarily nicely obtained, and if its first display tablet can ship comparable outcomes, then Wacom may lastly have a actual market rival to cope with. The Xencelabs Pen Display 24 prices $1,899 and will be preordered immediately, with full availability and delivery anticipated within the second quarter of 2023.