My girlfriend treated me to this drawing tablet monitor last week. After getting over the flu, I have managed to try it out for several days, so thought to do a review.

Unboxing

This came direct from Amazon and, as is their way, it arrived in a box way too big. Once inside, it's plain packaging was simply adorned with two small stickers; one indicated it was made in China, the other described the product as a Ugee HK 1560 Interactive Pen Display. Upon opening the box, I was presented with a thin piece of hardboard which served to protect the monitor from bumps and scrapes. Lifting that off I saw the adjustable stand packed tightly inside Styrofoam. To the left there was a long thin cardboard box, inside which I found all of the included accessories. I removed this, the Styrofoam, and then lifted the display out of the box.

What's included?

The display came with its adjustable stand already attached. This is removable should I ever want to attach the display to a monitor arm. Inside the accessories box came 2 pressure sensitive pens complete with a USB charging lead for each. There was also a pen stand that doubles up as a storage caddy for the included 8 pen nibs; together with the 2 already in the pens, I have 10 nibs to last me for a while. Ugee also supplied a 2 finger glove so that your skin doesn't touch the screen while drawing. Also included was a HDMI cable, USB cable to connect the display to my PC, power brick and leads. There was also a driver CD but I downloaded fresh drivers from Ugee's website.

Pens, stand, pen nibs and glove

Connecting and setting it up

This took no time at all. I plugged one end of the HDMI lead into my PC's graphics card, the other into the display. Next, I plugged the supplied USB lead into the computer and ran it, with the power lead, to the monitor.

Top to bottom: HDMI, USB, Power

Next I installed the drivers. As I had Wacom drivers already installed for my small graphics tablet, I had to uninstall them. No biggie, I wasn't planning on using it again. As I already had 2 monitors attached, it took a little fiddling around in the driver software to tell it which monitor to use the pen on. I then set about testing the pen sensitivity in the Wintab software.

Thick line to thin

Although the pen tracking seemed good already, I decided to run through the 9 point calibration. I was presented with crosshairs with a central red dot, which I had to hit as accurately as I could with the pen tip 9 times, left to right, top to bottom.

Calibration

As mentioned previously, the stand is adjustable. I only have to reach over the top, pull up a tab and adjust the angle to suit, letting go of the tab when I am satisfied. The stand is quite solid and, thanks to the rubber coating on the bottom rod, it does not slip around under use.

Back of display, stand adjuster tab at the top

Different angles of display

What's it like in use?

The display is a crisp 1080p, bright and colourful. The viewing angles are fantastic from this IPS display. The quality puts my current displays to shame. The pens have 2048 levels of pressure, and I quickly got used to adjusting my pen strokes while using them. They are comfortable to hold and have a slightly rubberized grip so they don't slip in your hand. The pen tracking is spot on and while drawing, the tracking and pressure are very predictable; my stroke is where I expect it and the strength and width of my strokes are easily controlled. The monitor may get slightly warm after hours of use, but not uncomfortably so.

Sculpting in Zbrush

Anything I don't like about it?

There are a couple of little niggles: firstly, yes it would be great if it had express keys like a Cintiq does, especially as the bezel seems so big. But on the other hand, this pen display is less than half the price of a similarly sized offering from Wacom.

Cintiq 13HD

The pens also suffer from a minor problem: while you can change the function of the 2 buttons on them, they cannot be keyboard shortcuts, just mouse button presses. I would have liked the option to change one for the SHIFT key and another for ALT. Besides these very minor things, there is nothing else I think detracts from this great product. Compared to the offerings from the big boys at Wacom, this is very competitively priced and does an awesome job.