Review on XENCELABS Wireless Shortcut Ultrathin Battery Free by Chad Myers

Take it with a grain of salt that I have never owned a professional drawing tablet so this is from a beginner and amateur perspective. absolutely everything with this product and it really is a stand alone solution. WHAT I LOVE Everything from the packaging to the product itself screams quality and thoughtful, even artistic design. The body of the tablet and the control unit ("Graphic Tablet") are beautifully finished in matte anthracite. All components are of good weight. The components feel solid and I expect them to stand up to wear and tear for a very long time. The power buttons are all sleek and simple. RGB LEDs are used with good effect. Being able to control everything wirelessly is just fantastic as it allows complete freedom of placement. The included USB-C cables are of excellent quality, however, with excellent strain relief and a braided nylon jacket. Setup was easy - instructions are included and displayed on the "graphics tablet" as you connect everything. Just go, enter the URL, download the drivers, connect your drawing and graphics tablet, run the installer and you're done. The tablet doesn't come with or recommend drawing software (although it does list integrations with about a dozen software platforms). ). The assumption is (reasonably) that if you're masquerading as a professional tool like this, you probably already have some experience and your own preferences in the software. In my opinion it's fantastic - which means no annoying cross-promotional sponsorship/trial subscription nonsense. The stylus (both) has a level of precision I've never seen before. The pressure sensitivity makes it very convincing to emulate the use of real pencils/pencils/brushes on real paper/canvas. Apply light pressure and you will hardly leave a thin mark, press harder and it will darken. The gradation from soft to hard pressing is so natural and gentle that for me it is absolutely indistinguishable from reality. The "bite" of the stylus on the pad feels perfect. As this is the first pill of this type I've used I don't have much reason to compare (ie I don't know what a 'bad' pill is) but I do know that it looks completely natural. don't need to be charged (not sure what the witchcraft is!) but they do have active buttons that make it easy to simulate mouse controls - right click etc. Flip the pen over and it's an eraser! It may not be new, but I think it's just awesome and works great. The pen case contains both pens, a variety of additional nibs and USB dongles for wireless connectivity. The graphics tablet is very handy. but IMO not really necessary. It's well made and really saves a lot of movement by having dedicated controls for 'zoom' and 'undo'. I think once I have a little practice it will be much easier for me to use it to select brush/pencil sizes etc. before I used touchscreens to create logical and architectural diagrams with Miro. I had to search a bit to find a good software application to take full advantage of this tablet. It wasn't long before I stumbled across Krita. Although I had to do this review on Windows 10, I use Linux as my daily driver, and Krita is a great open-source cross-platform drawing app that seems to have great support and an active community. Any knowledge I get in the Windows version should be translated to the Linux version. Krita works great with this tablet. This was my first time using a stylus on a touchscreen and I was worried that the abstraction of drawing something without being able to see where your hand is and what it's drawing at the same time would be hard to get used to, how Whatever drawing you make, the tablet can detect the position of your tip long before it touches the surface, so you always see the cursor on your digital canvas before you make any markings. WHAT DID NOT ISSUE If you're not a techie, this is almost certainly not a problem for you. I have a strong technological background, so this annoyed me a lot. The "drivers" for this tablet are not really drivers in the traditional sense - they are not installed or loaded by the operating system from system directories at boot time. Instead, the XENCELABS software is an application that runs at startup and requires administrative privileges to properly connect the hardware. If you just let it do what it does it works, but if you care about resources and security it's a bit annoying because you can't just install it under an administrator account and make it available to other users on the computer - this MUST also be set on the same machine per user. By nature, you should keep the XENCELABS application running in the background, which is constantly adding clutter and consuming resources. If you disable it at startup, you should run it as Administrator, but it's not registered with Windows in a way that automatically asks for elevation of privilege - you should be aware that right-clicking the icon and " Run as administrator" otherwise it silently crashes and won't activate the tablet. I suspect this is some kind of anti-counterfeiting measure to prevent imitators from copying your design (the design is certainly good enough that I want to protect it if it would be mine.) The tablet is advertised as being compatible with Linux, but at the time of writing this article, Linux drivers are listed as "Coming Soon" on the download page.Since Linux is my daily driver, I had to get an additional one Using machine to test this tablet I'm sure they will eventually come to release drivers for linux but confusing given that Given the Windows driver situation, I'm a little concerned that it's far from perfect. The product comes in a nice soft protective sleeve. which accommodates a drawing tablet, pen tablet, and stylus case, but leaves no room for USB cables. You can force them into the room, but it looks ugly and the valve doesn't close properly. I'm guessing they figured you'd probably leave the USB cables somewhere and just use the WiFi when you're carrying the tablet. In my case, however, I use it to keep my tablet clean and out of the way when I'm not using it. CONCLUSION This is an extremely beautiful and functional product with which I have had very good experiences. It's so finely tuned that the technology becomes kind of transparent and you just draw, not operate the tool. Pros: - All-inclusive package - Beautiful, functional design - Excellent compatibility - Wired and wireless modes - Two styluses for every grip preference - Additional tips for using the stylus - Stylus pens are active devices but do not require charging - Easy installation - None Crosstalk Advertisement for test software, nonsense Cons: - "drivers" aren't actually drivers - need to be installed per user, persistent app needs to run in background with admin privileges - drivers for Linux are "coming soon", currently not available - There is no space in the housing for a USB cable