Drawing tablets with screens provide a more intuitive experience than drawing tablets without screens. Drawing tablets with a screen are easier to use as they emulate drawing with a pen and paper without the disconnect between your hand and eyes when using drawing tablets without a screen.
If your goal is to draw consistently and accurately at your best level without wasting time, a drawing tablet with a screen is the better option in drawing tablets hand’s down.
Drawing tablets are one of if not the most important tool when it comes to drawing digital art so getting the best type will help make your drawing that much better.
Drawing Tablets With a Screen: The Disadvantages of Not Having One
The much more affordable price of tablets without screens may be enticing but there is a reason for them being cheaper. The screen. You do not get a screen, and a screen makes a world of a difference.
Disconnecting the surface you draw on and your actual drawing is the main disadvantage of drawing tablets without a screen. It is a weird and difficult learning curve adjusting to from traditional pen and paper drawing or almost any other traditional art mediums for that matter – painting, graffiti, carving, etc.
All physical mediums allow you to see the results of all the actions your hands make and how they affect the piece as you work. You can see the lines you sketch, the brush strokes you paint, as you make them.
Drawing tablets without a screen break this process. You draw on the tablet but you have to look away and at your monitor to see what you drew.
This breaks the flow and process as you need to balance drawing and checking your work as you go.
Having to do that also decreases the speed at which you can complete any drawings.
You will need to develop different and more difficult hand-eye coordination skills to be able to just begin to use drawing tablets without a screen let alone use them well. This disconnect will make it so any drawing on a tablet without a screen never be as good as what you are able to do with a screen.
However, there are also other disadvantages you may not think of at first.
A drawing tablet without a screen cannot be used without a screen. Yes, that’s right. This may seem obvious at first but then you realize the weight of this truth.
You can’t use that tablet to draw anything without an external monitor to connect to. Granted yes a majority of drawing tablets with screens have this same fault of needing a PC to run, some do not!
If you wanted to change up your work environment or just sketch outside for a little one day, you’d have to unplug and take your laptop with you wherever you go.
If you don’t have a laptop you actually are confined to your desktop and cannot go draw anywhere.
Some drawing tablets with screens are completely portable standalone machines capable of allowing you to draw wherever you go.
Things to Take into Account Concerning Drawing Tablets with Screens
So we’ve answered the first part of the question. Drawing tablets with screens are better and more intuitive to use for drawing compared to tablets without screens.
But how can you choose which drawing tablets with screens are right for your drawing? There are a lot of options on the market and it can be hard to know which one has features that are necessary and actually useful and which ones are gratuitous or more than what you need.
The first thing you should decide is if you need portability. As I mentioned previously, a lot of tablets can NOT be used without being connected to a PC. However, there are a variety of options that can be used on their own as tablets so start by deciding if this is something you need.
Going onto the second most important thing to look at for your drawing tablet is the size of the screen. The screen makes a world of a difference so definitely pick the right size for your needs. Screens come in a wide range of sizes from 8 inches to 32 inches! You want to make sure you buy one that meets your needs.
The third most important thing oddly enough is not a part of the actual tablet, but the stylus pen itself. Some of these pens are thicker than pencils because they are housing electronics, batteries, buttons, etc not just lead in a thin piece of wood. Make sure you experiment with the pens with each drawing tablet and see what feels most comfortable to you.
Next is the pressure sensitivity of the drawing tablet with a screen. Pressure sensitivity is what emulates pushing more or less on a pencil or pen on paper to get darker and thicker or lighter and thinner lines respectively. This is a lot easier on a drawing tablet with a screen as you get real-time feedback seeing the correlation between how hard you press and the weight of the line.
Many drawing tablets these days have more than enough pressure sensitivity at levels of 8192 even at the entry-level so you don’t need to worry but it is an important feature to have to give you the best drawing experience.
(pressure sensitivity level over 8000! funny drawing)
From here the features get more technical and as such aren’t a great cause for concern but still things to watch out for.
Tilt sensitivity is an important feature that helps further replicate a pencil on paper. The drawing tablet is able to adjust for the angle and rotation of the pen relative to the surface and change your lines angle and thickness accordingly. Just like pressure sensitivity tilt sensitivity really shines on a drawing tablet with a screen as you see the angle and tilt of your lines as you draw them without having to look away from your hand.
Buttons while not cause for concern are amazing add-on features to drawing tablets. These bring the advantages of digital art to your drawing experience by saving you tons of time with shortcuts. For example, most tablets have Undo, double click, click, zoom, pan, and erase as default shortcuts on their physical buttons. Some tablets even allow you to customize the buttons to shortcuts of your liking. By using a drawing tablet, you can maximize your efficiency and optimize your workflow to draw even faster and more smoothly.
Popular and Effective Drawing Tablets with Screens
As I mentioned earlier there are a lot of choices for you to explore when looking to purchase your drawing tablet with a screen. It can be hard to find which one fits your drawing style.
To help point you in the right direction, I’ve compiled a list of a few of the best drawing tablets with screens that are serving their owners quite well over the years.
I myself have purchased and used some of these tablets.
Obviously, you need to make sure that these drawing tablets will be a good match for your needs, so do your research! This is just a list to get you started on your search.
Make Digital Art will be doing more in-depth reviews of all of these products in the future to provide the best most accurate information for you but this list is a good place to start!
These come highly recommended and are split into categories for the different features they bring. Check them out and see if they seem like a good fit for you.
1. Wacom Cintiq 16 Drawing Tablet with Screen
Wacom Cintiq 16 Drawing Tablet with Screen DTK1660K0A
The most popular highly rated & reviewed drawing tablet with a screen made specifically for artists.
2.GAOMON PD1560
Half the price of the Wacom Cintiq 16 but the same size with similar great performance.
3. iPad Pro (4th Generation)
Apple portable tablet that is used by professional artists all around the world for their work.
4. Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+
Android tablet, not as good as the iPad Pro for the purpose of a mobile drawing tablet but just the same is used by professional artists to make professional work.
