Discussion of pen-enabled tablets/tablets with stylus

[Franzli]

Hi,

I didn’t see any overall discussion on the forum for comparing pen-enabled China tablets, so figured I’ll just start a thread. (There are probably discussions in the individual sections, but that’s not too helpful unless you already know which one you’re looking for.)

So in this thread we might collect a) which tablets support styli (possibly which type) and, more interestingly, b) impressions concerning the pen usability.

I was actually looking at the EZPad 5SE and the Chuwi Hi10 Pro. Hard to get any concrete info on the EZPad 5SE, but some hints suggest that it might actually have a Wacom digitizer (someone suggested it’s compatible witht he Cube i7 Stylus), which would suggest that palm rejection and pressure sensitivity might not be too bad?

The Chuwi Hi10 Pro on the other hand (while generally slightly more appealing) seems to use an “Active Digitizer”. Still haven’t really understood what that means, but from some people’s comments at various places palm rejection and pressure sensitivity don’t seem to work. I’m wondering if they don’t work at all, or if there’s a quality control issue which leads to them failing for many people. Anyone with experience on that?

Of course, this thread can be extended with information on other tablets. To do my share, a brief overview on the Cube i7 Book below.

Cube i7 Book (Wacom)

I’ve got this one and it’s got a Wacom digitizer which works quite well and allows for a range of compatible replacement styli. I’ve only used my Galaxy Note styli on this so far. Haven’t inked extensively as I haven’t quite transitioned to the tablet yet, but on Windows precision seemed reasonable. I suspect palm rejection as well, although I don’t use Windows for work, so haven’t really tried. There are some issues with the pen on Linux, in particular the precision seems to be off and I haven’t been able to get it calibrated yet (keeps on asking me to touch points on the screen and never finishes). Also, I haven’t figured out how to rotate the pen digitizer for portrait mode yet (screen and touch digitizer rotate fine on GNOME, the pen one seems to be stuck in landscape). Not sure when exactly, but I’ve recently been able to calibrate the Wacom on Linux, too, and it seems to be working quite nicely now! I also figured out how to rotate the digitizer (though not yet automatically, but manually using the xsetwacom program). Only issue there is that the pen needs recalibration once you rotate (not sure if that’s also normal on Windows).

Chuwi Hi10 Pro/Hi10 Plus (probably also Vi10 Plus?)

• Hipen Hi2 seems to be not much more than a capacitive stylus
• apparently no pressure sensitivity or palm rejection

EZPad 5SE

• digitizer seems to be Wacom compatible
• pressure sensitivity and palm rejection
• hover about 1-1.5cm
• included pen apparently not very good, Samsung S-Pen and compatible ones should work
• so pen-wise currently the only sub-200$ tablet with reasonable pen support I’m aware of
• note that in in the dedicated thread for the device some people were complaining about performance and maybe more importantly battery life

[Chris G]

Hi,

Nice thread, just to add my experience. If you want the best stylus experience. Wacom Core M tablets like the i7 Book and i7 Stylus are the way to go on a budget. If you can, a recommend the N-trig stylus of the Surface Pro 4, I found that one works the best.

The Chuwi Hi12 active stylus works fine, but I find that sometimes it’s slow due to delays caused by the Atom Z8300 I feel.

Chris | Admin
Please support us and help keep TechTablets online. Affiliate revenue is used to pay for the server, studio apartment (Techtablets HQ) and buy new tech to review. Without it, this site would be dead.
Next up for review:
Ordered and waiting for my: BMAX S15 & Teclast F6 Plus
Currently testing: LG G8X & Redmi K30

[Franzli]

Glad you’ve spotted the thread, Chris, and thanks for chiming in 🙂 I guess you’ve got one of the wider arrays of experience regarding these things (although you mentioned in some video that you don’t really use styli).

I fully agree regarding the Core-M tablets, and I’m quite happy with the i7 (actually finally managed to calibrate the stylus on Linux, maybe the wacom drivers got an update since I last tried). The x8300s will obviously be much more restricted power-wise. However, for the current intended use case I was looking to stay below 200€.

I came across this video by a guy who seems to be using the Hipen H1 on the Cube iwork 10: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGX361imUFY

Got me wondering whether there are more potential cross-compatibilities, that are hard to spot because the companies just don’t document a lot what they’re actually using. The H1 pen seems a bit nicer than the H2 one with its extra buttons – has anybody had a chance to test the Hipen H1 on the Chuwi Hi10 Pro or Plus by any chance? According to Gearbest etc. they’re not compatible, but I’m not sure how precise the answers are that they provide (they usually seem like very standardised answers).

Actually, I’m wondering whether the Hipen H2 is any different from any of the simple capacitive styli with a slightly smaller tip, considering that people don’t seem to get pressure sensitivity (or palm rejection). Really not sure whether it’s worth getting the stylus or just a waste of effort. Since the intended use case is probably mainly annotation, pressure sensitivity wouldn’t be so important, but palm rejection would be!

[Franzli]

Thanks to user khanh on the EZPad 5SE thread, it seems we can confirm that that tablet has a Wacom digitizer indeed:

khanh wrote:

I have an EZpad 5se. Bought it for digital art on the go. I will confirm that:

• Yes it’s Wacom. When I check Device manager, there is a pre-installed driver named “Wacom Device”
• Yes Galaxy note pen work on it along with many other Wacom pen: tried my note 3 pen, note 8.0 pen, hp 2760 and x2 612 pen; all work well on this tablet with pressure sensitive.
• The included pen is shit, throw it: the tip is too short, it keep skipping line and go up to full pressure almost immediately, unusable. My galaxy note 3 pen works way better and they are almost extract same size and fit in to the type cover slot perfectly. A full sized pen work best though, so if you do art, invest into that.
• Wintab driver is pre-installed on this device. That mean you can use old school software like Sai, PS CS5, Fireaplaca, Krita and GIMP with pressure sensitive.
• Yes, there is palm rejection. Hover is about 1-1.5 cm. I’m still not used to windows 10 palm rejection though : If you chose right handed palm rejection and touch the screen on the left of the pen tip, you will make a mark.

So far, this tablet hit all the sweet spot for an illustrator with such an affordable price. My only concern is that the tablet always is at full load with just Clip Studio Paint and 1 or 2 tab of Edge (for reference image). Just wondering if that is normal for x8300 chip.

[khanh]

Hey, just saw your thread so I would like to chime in a bit more about what I know. The local reseller I bought  my ezpad from also sell other tablet, and he did make  some video in our native language to review  those pen.

• According to him, the hipen h2 is just a capacitive  stylus. No palm rejection or pressure.  they use battery to release some kind of conductive electricity at the pen tip to emulate  finger. Online review show that these pens are prone to skip line so it wasn’t  worth buying.
• Chuwi hi 12 and cube iwork  10 flagship  use the same kind of digitizer which has pressure sensitive and palm rejection . You can use the same Hipen H1 pen ( which is completely  different  from Hipen H2 and doesn’t work with Chuwi 10 at all) on both of them. Problem  is most of those pens are rare and seem to be discontinued. I actually  bought  the cube iwork  10 flagship before because  it used to be the cheapest with pen. It took me 1 month to get the pen and the reseller told me it was one of the last produced. That pen lack hover cursor so palm rejection  is bad. It detect palm immediately after you lift if from screen 2 mm instead of 1.5cm with wacom. Also my unit seem to be defective with heavy jitters so I returned  it with a 50$ restocking fee and exchange for an ezpad instead.

Bottom line, wacom EMR is the most fool proof and robust option  so if you want a pen, get an ezpad 5se or i7 book. Other digitizer either have QC problem  or just plain bad.

[Steve G]

Hi. I own a Chuwi H10 Pro and can confirm the post above; the hipen h2 stylus is basically useless. Whether this is due to updating to the Win 10 anniversary edition and a broken driver or some other cause, it is worse than using a fingertip. Not recommended at all unless someone is aware of a fix.

[Rampire]

I can also confirm that there is basically no active stylus support for both Chuwi Vi10 Plus and Hi10 Plus which make use of H2 pen. It’s all crap, I am trying to sell this in my native country because sending it back to China makes no sense at all and would be too expensive… Hopefully I can find somebody who will buy it.

Could you recommend a tablet which would actually support touch sensitivity at the price of around 200$? It doesn’t need to be super fast, I am only looking for pen sensitivity in order to work with Photoshop and StaffPad on Windows.

[Franzli]

So apart possibly from the Chuwi Hi12, which may have a slightly more usable experience (though still limited from what I understood), pen support on Chuwi tablets seems to be a hoax largely? (Which doesn’t mean they’re not nice tablets otherwise, I guess)

Apart from the Cube i7 Stylus/Book, which are priced quite a bit over $200, the EZPad 5SE is the only sub-200 tablet that I’ve seen confirmed to have a Wacom digitizer. On the relevant thread here in the forum there’s a bit of a bandwith of opinions regarding the general servicability of the device though, so anyone interested might want to have  a look around there. Some people complained about speed (though I’m not sure that’s necessarily much different from other z8300 devices?) and maybe more importantly also about battery life.

Any other experiences about real or alleged stylus support on other (relevant) tablets?

[khanh]

The Hi 12/ Cube iwork 10 digitizer is actually usable if it work normally. I actually managed to draw things with it when the digitizer not acting up (see attachment). But when the tablet heat up, the jitters become big wave make it unusable. It’s probably due to the improper shielding of the unit I used to have.

As for the Ezpad 5SE flaw, I’m quoting my post from EZPad discussion thread:

khanh wrote:

Had the Ezpad for a few days now so I will write some of my own impression:

• The first thing I recommend would be buying a quality charger (it only come with an USB cord) and only charge when the tablet is off. This thing get HOT when you use while charging. The back of the tablet is plastic and I haven’t noticed it before but the hottest part on the tablet back seem to be (very slightly) swelled. I was worried the battery swell too soon, but it’s the only part that get hot on the back of the tablet so it should be where CPU is placed. I’m still treating it with caution, using a Samsung charger and only charge the tablet off and away from me.
• The typecover is okay-ish. I’m no extensive typist but it’s nice to have it protecting the tablet and have something to type on when I need to. It was included in my purchase and much cheaper than teclast so I don’t have much expectation for it other than the very basic. It’s nice that the keyboard have a touchpad disabling button too. The touchpad is only single touch and is not very sensitive.
• The tablet is definitely sluggish. It doesn’t feel better than my Asus vivotab note with last gen Atom and 2 GB of RAM. The processor is almost always at 90% load with just art program and 2 tab of Edge open. I heard the RAM speed is 1066 instead of 1600. I have a feeling Jumper purpose throttled the processor to reduce heat to make up for the flawed themal design that caused the heat problem mentioned above. I’m no power user and I follow the “if it is not broke don’t fix it” motto, so I won’t be tampering with the bios to make it faster.
• Speaker is awfully tiny, I can’t even hear coherent words when character whispering in movie, even at highest volume. Again not a deal breaker because I buy this thing to draw and can always use my phone for music.

Attachments:

You must be logged in to view attached files.

[Rampire]

Then the Ezpad does not seem a viable option at all if it’s not safe to use. Chuwi tablets are overally nice, it’s just that they are advertised as devices with pen support, which definitely is a hoax.

Although Vi10 Plus specs do not say anything about it explicitly, Hi10 Plus page on Chuwi website does indicate that the tablet works with H2 Pen and supports sensitivity. I would be willing to try the latter if it were not for the fact that both devices use the exact same touch driver, which makes it rather unlikely that one has pen support and the other hasn’t. All in all, cube i7 book looks like an optimal solution, I will definitely give it a go once I manage to sell Chuwi Vi10 Plus.

[khanh]

Just to clarify about the swelling part, I don’t know but the bump might have been there from the beginning. It’s very slight and and I only notice it while smoothing the back over and over. Given the placement of the bump, it’s 1/4 on the upper half at the side near the USB 3.0 and microUSB power; it’s the only part that get warm when the tablet is in use so it’s most likely where the CPU is placed, not the battery. The bump might have just been a heatsink on top of the CPU that press against the plastic back cause it to be hot.

Also the tablet only get really hot when I run a lot of programs on it at the same time while using the 3rd party charger. When I use on battery, the warmth is quite normal- similar to my Asus Vivotab Note; and after turning it off and use the Samsung charger, the warmth  while charging is almost unnoticable.

So it might have just been false alarm on my part. I only wish Jumper haven’t cheapen out and make metal back instead. If anything happen to my device, I will report it here but so far I haven’t gotten any problem with my device: Updating is fast and smooth and everything works as it should.

Update: It was a false alarm.

khanh wrote:

Just saw the tear down image in Nicolas’s review. The motherboard take up the whole half of the tablet on the side of USB 3.0 and power jack, and the part I mentioned to have a bump is exactly the themal pad on top of the processor. The part where battery is placed is totally cool to the touch so there is nothing to worry about at all.

[Author]

Posts