I ordered a Cintiq 13HD a few days ago. It’s scheduled to arrive Tuesday night. Review forthcoming.
The last Cintiq I owned was a 20WSX. I’m eager to see if this, the latest generation of Wacom tablet monitor hardware, improves significantly upon the old tech and unseats my current favorite, the MPS19U.
^ My reaction upon seeing Wacom’s Facebook post about their intention to release a portable Cintiq/art tablet and the subsequent, requisite Engadget mockup. I WANT TO TOUCH IT.
That said, the ASUS EEE Slates have long had 1024 pressure sensitive Wacom digitizers in them. The Surface Pro also has a Wacom digitizer, but reportedly lacks functionality in many apps (early hardware adoption is often risky, just ask my closet full of old art gadgets).
The thing both of those portable Cintiq-alike solutions have in common, aside from Wacom tech, is their operating systems. As a fairly devout Mac user who spends less than half of his time in a Windows environment (and even that time is largely just using Steam), the OS is a definite drawback for me.
But there’s a growing list of devices sporting Wacom Penabled™ digitizers with all flavors of OSes. I’ve spent a few weeks using a review unit Galaxy Note II Samsung sent me and it’s a pretty competent little device that has essentially become my portable, digital Moleskine.
A part of me wishes that a standard would be dictated down from on high at Cupertino – that the patents Apple holds for stylus technology were a precursor of things to come. The little competitors whose products I’ve reviewed are probably not enough to shake loose Wacom’s hold over the market. I’m not an analyst, but a big player, like an Apple, releasing competing tech would be disruptive.
My curiosity is piqued. I tend to use non-Wacom hardware, but I still have owned gobs of Cintiqs, Intuoses, Graphires, and even Bamboos (I try to test everything and see what sticks). At least we’re entering a time where the stagnant, static art hardware buying options are diversifying. It’s just a shame that one company is in a position to offer the majority of the solutions. It boggles the mind. Is the market so small that no one cares to knock Wacom off the pedestal? Too little to gain for too much effort?
Huion 10x6 Tablet Unboxing
Using the same internal tech as the Monoprice and Yiynova tablets I’ve reviewed previously, the Huion is a 10”x6” tablet with 2048 levels of sensitivity selling for less than $50 at the time of posting.
Yiynova took on Wacom’s tablet display monopoly last year with their release of the DP10 and MSP19. I purchased those units and they left me wanting.
The Yiynova used Waltop digitizers (digitizers being the bit of hardware that senses stylus position and pressure variance). There was significant jitter in the line quality. Creating straight lines was near impossible especially when making a deliberate, slow effort and the cursor jumped around like a ferret on meth. The display quality and fit and finish were fine, but the underlying tablet tech was a let down. My conclusion? The Waltop digitizer was junk and it let the otherwise competent hardware hanging.
After, I reviewed Monoprice’s graphics tablets. Those use UC Logic digitizers. They’re snappier in OSX than Wacom equivalents with less cursor lag and crisper fidelity in small movements. They sensed light pressure with more accuracy than any Wacom hardware I’ve owned. I was so pleased with the UC Logic based tablets that I purchased a heap of other equipment by them. I sold my Cintiq. I sold my Intuos. Eight months, four tablets and around nine styli later, I became an all UC Logic studio.
I wished that someone could pair the underlying, fantastic UC Logic digitizer tech with a tablet monitor enclosure. I even bought some hardware to try and make my own. But now I don’t have to. Yiynova must have been listening. The MSP19U is a second generation product that jettisons the inferior Waltop digitizers of the first model and replaces them with UC Logic internals.
Does the pairing live up to the sum potential of its disparate parts? Can a relatively unknown $569 tablet monitor compete with a $1999 Wacom Cintiq? Yes, it competes. It even bests the Cintiq in a few key areas. But I’m jumping ahead.
The Yiynova MSP19U is a 19,” 1440x900 tablet monitor with an adjustable, VESA-compatible stand and mounting bracket. It comes with one stylus, one battery, and several additional pen nibs. It has 2048 levels of pressure sensitivity and a 4000lpi digitizer.
The unit is light but not flimsy. Thinner than a Cintiq thanks to its LED backlighting, I find myself occasionally sitting the Yiynova in my lap like a digital art board.
At 19,” 1440x900, and 89.37 PPI, no one will mistake the Yiynova for a retina level display. It’s nearest Wacom neighbor, the 22HD, has a 22,” 1920x1080, and 100.13 PPI, screen. While the Wacom beats the Yiynova in sheer PPI, I always found the color of Cintiqs to be quite muddy thanks in part to an antiglare coating present on the monitors and dim backlighting. I went so far as to remove the glass from my Cintiq to scrape the coating off its back. It helped a little, but was still less than ideal and was not an activity for the faint of heart. Prying, scraping, and modding a $2,499 device to make it useable is a bummer and I went into a lot of detail about the shortcomings of Cintiq tech in my previous review if you want to learn more.
The LED backlighting on the Yiynova makes for a brighter overall display. It’s a little cool out of the box, but was fine once calibrated. If I had to choose between lower PPI or dimmer, muddier colors, I’d pick slightly lower PPI. This particular category is probably a draw.
The glass of the display sits above the LCD by around an 1/8th of an inch and looks to be about the same distance as my previous Cintiq. Until a manufacturer creates a unit with an iPad-like fused LCD and glass display, cursor parallax will be a concern (and is present for both the MSP19U and Cintiqs).
The stand allows for either complete verticality or nearly horizontal viewing angles and is easy to operate. Rotation is not possible, but I find it to be less of a necessity these days. Photoshop, Painter, Manga Studio, and nearly any art app worth it’s salt allow users to rotate the canvas arbitrarily.
There’s a VGA out port on the back of the monitor that will mirror the activity on your tablet to yet another external display. It’s an odd inclusion, but could be handy for making presentations or when teaching a digital art class. I do both from time to time, so it may be of some use.
Setup was quick. I tested the unit on maxed 2012, 13” Macbook Air. The Air has a mini display/thunderbolt port, so an adapter was required to pair it with the Yiynova. All in, the MSP19U needs a VGA port, a wall socket, and a USB port to get rolling.
I already had UC Logic drivers installed on my system from my Monoprice tablets, so I only had to plug in the tablet to begin. The bundled driver software is the same version as the downloadable driver on the UC Logic, Panda City, and Yiynova websites, so use whatever is most convenient.
A quick note about drivers. Like with Monoprice tablets, I recommend installing drivers before plugging the tablet in, especially in Windows. Windows will install generic HID (Human Interface Device) drivers otherwise. They’re horrible and you’ll think your tablet is broken. It’s not. You’ll have to uninstall the generic HID driver from device manager, install the proper drivers, and only then plug in your tablet. This mistake accounts for five to ten support emails in my inbox a week.
Some stubborn apps enable tablet specific features (like pressure sensitivity options) only after detecting Wacom drivers present on a system. I install Intuos 3 drivers alongside any alternative tablet hardware to fool these apps into thinking a tablet is present. Painter and Illustrator are the two biggest culprits in my experience in both Win and Mac environments.
I tested the monitor with Photoshop CS6, Painter 12, and Manga Studio 4 and 5 in OSX and Windows. Much like the Monoprice tablets that came before, I found performance even better in OSX than Windows, but fine in both.
There are cursor calibration options in Windows, but no such options in OSX. I didn’t find cursor offset or parallax to be as bad on the Yiynova as on a Cintiq, and never found myself wanting or needing to futz with the cursor offset anyhow.
Cursor lag is similarly less pronounced on the Yiynova than a Cintiq and drawing felt more natural as a result.
A note on Paint Tool SAI. I’ve heard there are some issues running a multiple monitor setup with Paint Tool SAI, specifically, but that’s hard to blame on the Yiynova. SAI has been largely abandonware for some time, and it’s starting to show. I recommend using Clip Paint/Manga Studio 5. It’s a bit like a mashup of SAI, Painter, and Photoshop, and has largely replaced all those other apps in my workflow. My Windows box is a single monitor setup, so I was unable to verify these reports.
The drawing surface is slicker than that of a Cintiq and took a little getting used to. I found that long, deliberate lines could sometimes wobble a bit as my stylus tip slid on the glass, but it was a user limitation, not a failure of the digitizer panel.
Viewing angles on the monitor are worse than a Cintiq, but brightness is better. Viewing angles never veered into unusable territory, but the resolution and viewing angles of the LCD are the single largest area I’d like to see improved in the future.
Bottom line? Is it perfect? No. Are Cintiqs? No.
The Cintiq 22HD costs $1999. It has a slightly laggier feel to drawing, but a higher resolution display and has programmable hotkeys. It’s heavy and cumbersome. At the time of writing, the Yiynova MSP19U costs $569. It has a superior drawing experience in terms of lag and cursor offset to my eye, but a lower quality display and no hotkeys. It’s light and easier to move around a desk or sit in your lap.
Even without the price disparity, I would opt for the MSP19U. Cursor lag was the single biggest complaint I could muster against the Cintiqs and I think the 19U is the winner there. How well it draws trumps how good the image looks for me every time.
But, price matters and we should talk about it. The 19U costs 72% less than the Cintiq 22HD and 77% less than the 24HD. Even if it were marginally worse in all regards – and I find it neither heads and shoulders above or below, simply different – it would still be a steal.
My 19U is now a permanent member of the household. I don’t plan on, or feel the need to, replace it with a Cintiq.
Wacom has genuine competition on both the tablet and tablet monitor fronts. Spread the word. Make them feel some heat. There’s no reason this technology should be so expensive. The underlying hardware has been largely stagnant for a decade with no real innovation.
At $569, and with performance that often meets or exceeds Wacom’s hardware, the MSP19U is more than a viable alternative. It’s the disruptive agent of change the industry needs.
Buy the MSP19U using my Amazon affiliate link if you want to support my efforts to test digital art hardware.
Lastly, I want to thank you all. There have been more than 34,000 reblogs of my Monoprice review on Tumblr alone. UC Logic digitizers are a known quantity in the tablet space now and it’s thanks to you.
Monoprice makes graphics tablets? I thought they were just an outlet for cheap cables. It was news to me that they sell all sorts of audio, video, and computer accessories.
They have a reputation for making good stuff, cheap, including graphics tablets. But, on those, I never bit.
When reviewing the Yiynova Cintiq alternative, I researched all of Wacom’s competition, learning that those 1st gen Yiynovas used a Waltop digitizer (digitizers being the flat hardware panel that interprets pen movement and translates it onscreen). I decided to buy a Monoprice stylus to see if it would work on a Waltop digitizer. It didn’t. This roused my curiosity. If the Monoprice wasn’t a Waltop based tablet, what was it? The Monoprice tablets use UC Logic digitizers, a brand I hadn’t found during my prior research.
At the time of writing, less than $50 nets you a 6.25“x10” tablet and around $80 will get you a larger 9“x12”. With those prices, and my inclination to try any tools I can, I ordered the 6.25“x10” tablet with low expectations. Something so cheap can’t possibly be good, right?
After spending a week with the 6.25“x10” Monoprice, my Yiynova and Cintiq remain unplugged and I gave my Intuos away to a friend. The Monoprice tracks subtle pressure variances and small movements with less lag and more crisp fidelity than any of the others. It is, put crudely, fucking awesome, in both OSX Lion and Windows 7 x64.
It holds accuracy at obscenely small levels even when zoomed way out, which is where most tablets falter. The following screen recording in OSX shows how stable the Monoprice tablet is in both pressure variance and fine detail.
The Monoprice performed flawlessly in OSX. This is welcome news. With most tablets, Wacom included, OSX has long felt a second class citizen with slightly less accuracy and more lag present in the drivers.
I’ve found that some apps, in both Windows and OSX, enable tablet specific features only if they detect Wacom drivers present and running on a system. I recommend installing Wacom’s Intuos 3 drivers alongside the Monoprice ones. They do nothing for the tablet, but trick uncooperative apps into operating with the Monoprice.
Hardware-wise, the stylus is a bit shorter and narrower than Wacom’s and is about the same weight. It rests comfortably in my oversized meat-paw. The pen requires a battery, but has no on-off switch. It turns on when you use it and off when idle. The battery has lasted over a week with constant use and shows no signs of giving up. The battery slot inside of the pen feels a bit cheap, but is soon forgotten after closing the pen back up and represents the singular negative aspect of the hardware. An aftermarket stylus is available for around $8. I’ve tested a few aftermarket, UC Logic compatible styli, and like these (available from a vendor in Turkey) the most. Ten replacement nib packs are available for less than a dollar.
The tablet has a slightly textured surface and drawing feels tactile and a bit toothy. The hardware buttons worked fine and were fully customizable. Eight buttons is a lot to keep track of and I found myself using my keyboard more often than not when jamming on hot keys.
All the following images were drawn on the Monoprice in Manga Studio or Photoshop CS6. Included is a short video, sped up 2x, drawing in OSX with Manga Studio.
Drawing on the Monoprice leaves me feeling a bit punk rock. It’s better than it has any right to be – better than any of the other hardware I own. Its drivers outperform Wacom’s in OSX and I found myself making excuses to sit down and draw with it.
An off-brand graphics tablet by Monoprice out-performs tablets ten times more costly and replaced my Cintiq and Intuos tablets for daily use. Who would’a thunk it?
[Edit: Since this original post in April, I bought the 9“x12” and like it even more than the unit reviewed here. I sold my Cintiq and have done all my commercial work on either my 10“x6.25” or 12“x9” UC Logic tablets.]
Source: frenden.com
I’ve used an Intuos3 for several years, and after just recently acquiring a new cintiq with double the pressure sensitivity levels, I find no difference compared to the intuos3’s levels - EXCEPT that it is so much harder to get SUPER LIGHT pressures. I have to press EXTREMELY lightly, which I guess takes time to learn, but it seems kind of unnecessary.
But I dunno, maybe I’m just not used to it yet.
That’s my single biggest complaint with Wacom hardware. The light end of the pressure curve blows out extremely quick. It’s super unnatural and makes me too conscious of how I’m making strokes. That takes me away from focusing on the overall pice and I feel like the work suffers.
Worse, Wacom styli seem to lose further fidelity on the light end over time. I’ve owned successive iterations of both Intuos and Cintiq hardware and have used it professionally for almost a decade. I’ve definitely logged enough hours and given Wacom a fair shake. I’m just sick of having to buy a new $60 stylus every few months to regain a marginal amount of light ended pressure, especially given how sucky their light pressure detection is already.
The UC Logic hardware has a more natural pressure curve. I don’t find myself babying the ends of my strokes and being overly conscious of the mechanics of drawing. Whatever it lacks in hot-key customizability, style, and driver options, it makes up for in simply feeling better for drawing. For me, better drawing fidelity will win out over industrial design every time.
Ultimately, the lack of accurate pressure fidelity, the cursor lag, and the parallax due to the distance between the LCD and drawing surface lead me to sell my Cintiq.
Source: twitter.com
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This is the most accurate thing I’ve ever seen.
Monsters in the morning.
Isaac Hayes.
Gamesmanship.
