XPPen Star03 V2 Drawing Tablet Graphics Drawing Pen Tablet with 8192 Levels Pen Pressure Battery-Free Stylus Passive Pen Signature Board with 8 Hot Keys (Black)

I purchased this tablet to evaluate for my students. Also to have a tablet for travel to keep in my laptop bag. Here is my review.received the Star 03 Pen Tablet this evening and immediately put it through the paces in Photoshop. First, you have to download and install the drivers and reboot your computer. No problem. I found the stylus a bit shorter than the Wacom but seemed ok also. It was comfortable as a nice pen. There was no noticeable lag in drawing with the stylus and it was just as good as the Wacom. I did find out that the stylus and tablet do not support pen tilt or pen rotation but I have never had that feature in the older version of the Wacom Tablet that I have. The digitizing area is the same as my Wacom Tablet and it replicates the screen area perfectly. I did find a good advantage over my Wacom in the 8 programmable buttons down the left side. I re-programmed them more to things I use a lot. So now I have two buttons to zoom in and out on the canvas, and I programmed two of the buttons to resize the brush. "[ and ]". The others I left as the default functions. The top button, for now, opens the tablet settings and once I get happy with everything I will reprogram that button. Programming the buttons is extremely easy in the tablet control screen.The tablet seems well made and I could only see one small improvement that could be made. The USB connection leaves the plug sticking out on the side that could be damaged carrying it in my laptop case. Once you connect the USB cable to the tablet it seems to lock and does not come out easily. The weight of the tablet is less than the Wacom but seems rugged. The stylus comes with a stand that holds extra nibs in the base. They give you about eight extra nibs. I am still on the original nib on my Wacom and have used it for about ten years. So I do not know if their nibs wear out or they just give you a lifetime supply. I did find the pressure sensitive stylus something that is very handy but will take getting used to as my Wacom did not have that feature. The newer Wacom's all have the pressure sensitive stylus.XP-PEN makes a number of versions of tablets and is all a fraction of what you would pay for a Wacom. They even have a 21" display tablet and is $500.00 compared to Wacom's sime size for $1,700 dollars. So they are really giving Wacom a run for there money.In conclusion, for most photographers who wish to start using a tablet or even those who have been using a Wacom and want a second tablet to carry with them, I think this is a great value. I have only tested it for a few minutes but if it holds up I would have no problem recommending this to any of my students that want to get into using Photoshop. For $50.00 you really cannot go wrong. The $100.00 version is wireless but you have to connect up the USB cable to charge the tablet so I am not sure how much of a need I have for that feature. One of the tablets has a scroll wheel that I think I would have liked for brush sizing.In conclusion, I am happy with the product and it will be nice to have a tablet in my laptop case for traveling and not having to take my tablet off my home docking station. It came in one day from Amazon using Prime. Again for $50.00 how could you really go wrong.

I just got this tablet in today. I assemble the pen caddy, and plugged the tablet into a USB port. There is a bit of a learning curve, especially if you have used smaller tablets before.With smaller tablets, if you move the pen to the edge of the tablet, when you run out of room you then simply lift the pen from the tablet and go back to your starting point. The pointer does not move on the screen.With this tablet, your pen is always in absolute position relative to the screen. If you left the pen from the tablet in one position, and bring it back to the tablet in a different position, the screen pointer will jump to the new position.I purchased a drawing glove to use with this tablet, but have found that I don't need it. Drawing is completely dependent upon the pressure of the pen on the surface of the tablet.I just opened the box and plugged it into my Ubuntu Linux computer. And while I have only just started to experiment with it, so far, I really like it. No drivers need to be installed with my Ubuntu Linux operating system. Everything works naturally.Update:I've had this tablet for about 12 hours now, and have come up with a few more thoughts when using this tablet with Linux.1st. The software is for a Windows computer or a MAC. The programmable buttons can't be programmed in Linux.2nd. Most of the pen functions work great. But I have run into a couple of drawing issues when using the drawing program Krita, which is available for Windows and Linux. Freehand drawing with the program is great. Using the program’s special functions such a bezier curve is problematic. This may be simply because I am on a Linux system.There is one other issue that I noticed while using this table with Krita, and I think that this may be good. I will use the example of using the solid black color for drawing. The line tools when used often come out as a grayish color. I have to go over the lines repeatedly to get them a solid black. But I can use some of the special tools to blend the artwork more easily.As opposite to using this Krita program with a mouse, where the lines come out solid black.I forgot to mention before that the extra tips are stored in the pen caddy.One last thing, I said before that the drawing glove was not needed. I've discovered that using the glove is a good idea, after leaving sweat marks on the tablet from my bare hand.Update on my 3rd day using this thing.It's GREAT for photographers and photographs!Today, I have been using this tablet to retouch photos of mine that I had scanned. Mainly getting the dust spots out of them.I have many years worth if film and prints which I am in the process of scanning and saving as digital images. Saying this differently, I have thousands of photos which I have taken over the years with film which I am now scanning into digital format. And nearly each image comes up with dust somewhere, regardless of how clean I try to keep everything.Using this tablet allows me to fly though the spotting routine with each image in no time. It takes a fraction of the time that I was using to do this same job with a mouse.My daughter talked me into buying a tablet for photography. I had used the small Wacom tablets before and didn't think much of them. I purchased this one based on price and size. It is truly impressive when working with your photos.