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The Rundown

Best Overall:XP-Pen Artist16 Pro 15.6 Drawing Tablet at Amazon, “With a host of creative features that make it an excellent all-around choice for most artists.”
Best Android:Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 at Amazon, “Featuring the best stylus available on mass-market devices.”
Best Drawing Pad:Huion H610 Pro Graphic Drawing Tablet at Amazon, “Narrow enough to perfectly fit on your desk with a keyboard, a space-saving plus for graphic designers.”
Best Budget:Monoprice 10594 Graphic Drawing Tablet at Walmart, “Not a top-of-the-line number, but more than eye-catching for the price.”
Best for Windows Users:Microsoft Surface Pro 12.3 at Best Buy, “A standalone device that lets you do basically everything a laptop would allow you to do.”
Runner-Up, Best Overall:Huion KAMVAS GT-191 at Amazon, “Gives you a massive amount of sketching real estate for the price.”
Best Small Screen:Lenovo Yoga Book at Amazon, “Guaranteeing high-performance hardware despite its trim size.”
Best for Professionals:GAOMON PD1560 at Amazon, “Compatible with the latest Windows (7/8/10) and Mac OS systems, as well as most professional designing programs.”
Runner-Up, Best Budget:Huion H420 USB Graphics Drawing Tablet Board Kit at Amazon, “With an active area of 4 x 2.23 inches and a resolution of 4,000 lines per inch.”
Best Apple Tablet:Apple iPad Pro at Apple, 'The user-friendly touch controls and lag-free connection to the Apple Pencil make for a very natural drawing experience.'
Best Paper-to-Digital:Wacom Intuos Pro Paper Edition at Amazon, “Allowing you to capture and upload pen-on-paper artwork into a completely digital form.”

Our Top Picks

Best Overall: XP-Pen Artist16 Pro 15.6 Drawing Tablet

4.1

The Artist16 is a drawing tablet by XP-Pen with an extra-wide viewing angle and a host of creative features that make it an excellent all-around choice for most artists. Featuring a 1080P FullHD IPS display, your creations will come to life in vivid color and definition. An extra-wide, 178-degree viewing angle gives you the canvas you need to realize your design. And with 2,078 levels of pressure sensitivity, this tablet will work for drawing, painting, editing, designing, sketching and animating without any trouble.

The Artist16 comes with two rechargeable pens, a black anti-fouling glove and an HDMI adapter. It has eight express keys to eliminate headaches, allowing you to focus on the creative element. The adjustable display stand will also give you the freedom and flexibility you need to get in the zone. Finally, the tablet is compatible with Sai, Photoshop and most mainstream design software.

Best Drawing Programs For Windows

Best Android: Samsung Galaxy Tab S3

4.4

Samsung equips their Galaxy tablets with the best stylus available on mass-market devices. The S Pen offers true-to-life pressure and sensitivity that rivals pens designed exclusively for drawing tablets. The pen never needs to be re-charged and can operate as a variety of drawing styles and devices.

In addition to a best-in-class pen, the Galaxy Tab S3 is an excellent all-around tablet. It has a vivid Super AMOLED display for deep contrast and extraordinary colors. It also comes with powerful Quad speakers tuned by AKG and a featherlight keyboard that can be attached to the tablet so that it operates like a laptop for word processing. It has a powerful 12-hour battery and a speedy Snapdragon quad-core processor.

Best Drawing Pad: Huion H610 Pro Graphic Drawing Tablet

4.1

Designed with office work in mind, this ultra-narrow tablet is wireless and fits perfectly on your desk with a keyboard, a space-saving plus for graphic designers. The tablet connects to your PC or Mac where it works on Illustrator, Maya and other graphic design software (you'll need Windows 7 to 10 or Mac 10.10 or above). It has a six-meter wireless connection distance and a 2500mAh battery that lasts up to 40 hours. The sleek design separates the touch and draw area, so you can work without worrying about your palm accidentally touching the screen. The device has six customizable buttons and 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity.

Best Budget: Monoprice 10594 Graphic Drawing Tablet

3.7

When it comes to functionality for your drawing tablet, it doesn't get much more nuts-and-bolts than this option from Monoprice. If you haven’t heard of the brand, then it’s worth taking a look, because tech heads swear by Monoprice for their cables, and in recent years we’ve been increasingly more impressed with the company’s ability to produce true quality products across the board. This drawing peripheral is no exception – it’s a serious workhorse for the visually inclined.

Let’s unpack the features: it offers a 10 x 6.25-inch drawing surface that sports a 4,000 LPI drawing resolution at a report rate of 200 RPS. There are 2,048 levels of pen pressure, rounding out all dimensions of accuracy for the drawing surface itself. These are certainly not top-of-the-line “premium” numbers, but are more than eye-catching for the price. There are 16 hot zones that can at the top of the drawing surface that can be assigned by you, plus further assignable expression keys that’ll let you do as much work as possible on the surface itself without the need to move to other accessories. It connects to the computer via USB and is compatible with basically any modern OS, and could even be modded to work on Linux.

Best for Windows Users: Microsoft Surface Pro 12.3

4.1

Like a couple of the other tablets on this list, the Surface isn’t strictly a drawing surface – it’s a standalone device that lets you do basically everything a laptop would allow you to do. But the lines are getting blurrier and blurrier when it comes to the difference between tablets and laptops and drawing peripherals. The Microsoft Surface Pro line is the tech giant’s strongest tablet effort to date, and while the original Surface generations didn’t take off, these newer ones are completely viable options, especially if you’re a working designer.

For starters, their ultra-high resolution PixelSense displays are almost as stunning as Apple’s Retina Displays, and the color representation is pretty solid, too. There’s an added color bonus of being able to spec out and add notes on the screen about print colors that are directly compatible (and readable) by the OS sending print jobs to a Windows Ink printer – a great feature for designers working in print. It’s powered by a full Intel Core i5 processor and 4GB of RAM, so if you do want to do more than just use it to draw, you’ll have tons of speed.

In terms of accessories, the accompanying pen and Microsoft’s Surface Dial are both great options for those who want to be more and more efficient and precise with their gestures, and the screen itself offers extra accurate tracking. The whole thing is super light and it runs on an impressive battery that Microsoft says is 50 percent and 68 percent better than the previous two generations, respectively.

Check out our other reviews of the best 2-in-one laptop tablets available on the market today.

Runner-Up, Best Overall: Huion KAMVAS GT-191

The 19.5-inch IPS, widescreen HD display offered by the Huion KAMVAS drawing tablet is the first thing you’ll notice when you pull it out of the box. And that’s for good reason — this thing gives you a massive amount of sketching real estate for the price. But the 72 percent

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