The Huion H420X is my very first drawing tablet. I’m not really a visual artist, but I wanted to doodle while using my laptop.
Like most people, I find drawing with the mouse hard and awkward so I decided to buy the H420X because it was very affordable, and just in case I didn’t stick with drawing, I didn’t want to feel like I had wasted too much money on a tablet I was not going to use.
For what I got, I’m amazed. Not only was this rather affordable compared to other devices of this kind, it’s been fun to use!
Unboxing
The box is nice and brightly designed. Inside is the tablet, pen, pen nib clip, 8 replacement nibs, USB cable and a Quick Start Guide.
Design & Build Quality
This little drawing tablet is slim and compact, which can be easily carried in a regular laptop bag.
The device is 6.77” long and 4.3” wide. The working area, however, is only 4.17” by 2.6”.
The active area is designated by 4 golden colored chevrons with the HUION logo on the right. No hotkeys, 7mm in thickness and 167g in weight.
It has what Huion calls a ‘narrowed palm rest to release hand fatigue’, which basically means it has a sloped edge that doesn’t dig into your wrist whilst drawing!
Installing tablet driver and setting up
If you’re using the tablet to play the osu game, it doesn’t need additional steps once it’s plug to your computer.
however, If you want to use it for drawing or editing photo, you have to go to the Huion’s website and download the latest H420X driver. The manual can also be downloaded from there.
Once the driver is installed, you can change the tablet settings to your needs. You can assign functions such as double click, right click, etc. to the two buttons on the pen, and change the pen pressure settings.
Stylus Pen
The PW100 stylus pen supports 8192 levels of pressure sensitivity, with a reported 300PPS report rate, and needs to be only 10mm away from the tablet surface to be registered.
Another best thing about the pen or stylus is that you do not need to charge it. It works through EMR tech, and get power from the tablet.
Hence, you get long hours of creation with smooth functioning and user-friendly experience.
The pen has two buttons, which can be configured to your preference in the software. I tend to keep it as ‘Eraser’ and ‘Right Click’ modes as I use my traditional keyboard for shortcuts when working.
Drawing Experience
If you are a beginner like me, it does take a bit to get used to since it doesn’t have a display.
The tablet supports ‘multi-angle rotation’ which in laymen’s terms means you can turn it around to use at any angle – especially handy if you’re left handed or using this device to draw on a phone or tablet – the ‘portrait’ orientation will feel more natural drawing on these devices.
Rotating the tablet and drawing on an Android device felt more comfortable with my hand resting alongside its longer edge. As with the other tablets in this range, it does have a nice ‘feel’ to it as the pen glides over the surface – there’s no ‘scratchy’ feel to it.
Also for any of the new artists out there, if you plan to use this tablet with your Windows PC or Mac- I would recommend Clip Studio Paint Pro, It is a very good cheap paid app that has a lot of great resources and you only have to pay for once ($58.50) on Windows PC and Mac (it is monthly/yearly on mobile tho.
I can get really fluent lines out and the Lines produced on screen had a nice tapered look to them and the pressure sensitivity worked perfectly. Depending on how you like to draw (light or heavy-handed!) you can adjust the pen sensitivity in the driver software.
Due to the compact active area of 4.17 x 2.6 inches, it was hard to draw on with this small tablet. It is more suitable for writing, annotating PDFs, signing and editing photos.
Note that the H420X does not come with a pen holder, so you’ll need to be careful this doesn’t roll off your desk when not in use!
One more thing, I suggest investing on an artist glove, the kind that covers your pinky and ring fingers only, to prevent your hand from leaving sweat and oil smudges on your tablet.
In Conclusion
All in all, Huion H420X is a solid little tablet that perfect for playing osu, editing photos, writing, taking notes, annotating pDfs, etc and for those on a tight budget.
The slim design makes it comfortable and the size gives you the ability to use a fair amount of work space.
Never did I feel frustrated with accuracy or the weight of it. For any artist dabbling in digital art, this is more than enough to satisfy your needs.
Don’t expect miracles out of this thing though- it’s like $40 dollars and isn’t going to make you a world renown artist, but it’ll definitely up your digital art game if you’ve been stuck to drawing with your finger or mouse for years.
