A little over a year ago I bought my first ever Xencelabs product, the medium sized pen tablet, and now thought I would write down my experience with it and how it has been holding up, to offer a long-time review for anyone seeking to buy one.

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Disclaimer: I am not sponsored by or affiliated with Xencelabs in any way. I'm only sharing my personal thoughts and my experience with the tablet.

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Please note that this review is written from the perspective of a 3D Character Artist. As I don't use it for drawing at all, I won't go over its drawing capabilities. For that I highly recommend the review by Brad Colbow on YouTube!

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Wacom vs Xencelabs

While reading the review you will notice my tendency to compare the tablet nearly exclusively to Wacom pen tablets, simply due to the fact that I've mainly been using Wacom tablets in the past, from the Intuos line to the Cintiq. I also dare to say that the Wacom Intuos Pro M, the very pen tablet I used before, can be considered the direct competitor of the Xencelabs medium sized tablet.

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I discovered Xencelabs through a YouTube review by Adam Duff. The main reason for the switch were many issues I had over time with my Wacom pen tablets, mainly Bluetooth connectivity issues and driver issues I had with the Intuos Pro M.

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Price

The Xencelabs Pen Tablet Medium is currently available for 269.90€ (as of December 2024), which makes it over 100€ cheaper than the Wacom Intuos Pro M.

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What's in the Box?

The first thing you are going to see once opening the package is the tablet itself, with an active draw area of 262.4 mm x 147.4 mm (10.33 in x 5.8 in). The connectivity can be established via Bluetooth or cable, which works incredibly well and reliable, even without using the included Bluetooth dongle.

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One thing to note about the tablet itself is that compared to the Wacom Intuos Pro M, the Xencelabs pen tablets have no touch functionality. To me personally this is not a loss at all, as I never used this feature with my Intuos Pro anyways, yet to some the lack of it might be a dealbreaker already.

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A nice gimmick are the LED corners, which's color can be changed via the Xencelabs driver (more on that later).

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Apart from the tablet, you will get two pens in a beautiful box, a thicker one with three buttons, similar to the ones from Wacom or other brands, and a thinner one, with 10 replacement nibs total (6 standard nibs and 4 felt nibs).

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Which pen you want to use is a matter of preference, personally I absolutely LOVE the thinner pen, and it became my daily driver from day one on. Due to its thinner design and lighter weight it rests much better in my hand and just feels less "chunky". Also, the haptics of the buttons feel much better on the thinner pen in my opinion.

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The remaining accessories include the already mentioned Bluetooth dongle, a USB-A to USB-C adapter, a charging cable, a drawing glove (size M) and a transportation case for the tablet.

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Driver

Personally, I love the design of the Xencelabs driver's interface, and in my opinion it's by far the best designed one out of all the brands I've used so far (in my case Wacom, Huion, Gaomon and XP-Pen).

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Apart from common settings, such as assigning shortcuts/actions to each of the three tablet's buttons or pen buttons, you can also change the color and brightness of the LED corners of the tablet, either globally or depending on the software you use, which is a pretty nice gimmick.

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Wear and Tear

Up until recently the pen tablet still looked and felt brand new, and apart from the usual wear marks you will get over time with pen tablets, there is only one issues I encountered not too long ago.

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After a little over a year of use, seemingly out of nowhere, I noticed that the top layer of the tablet started to dissolve. These almost microscopic scratches were only visible when looking at them from against a light source, yet noticeable whenever I used the stylus.

Any time I would move the pen over the tablet's surface, the pen would get stuck for but a second at these marks, and although this was very subtle, it remained noticeable and annoying.

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While researching I found that some other users had this issue too, as for example discussed in this Reddit thread.

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I sadly can't explain myself how these scratches came to be and if this is an user error or an issue with the top layer or coating these tablets seem to have.

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Noted, any pen tablet is going to have shinier spots and some marks eventually, especially where the pen was used most, which usually is in the center area. But this is usually in form of the surface getting smoother and shinier, rather than actually having such deepened marks. Even with a very sharp pen nib and excessive pressure, the surrounding area would definitely also show scratches. But in my case, the surface actually barely had any scratch marks or signs of it already having been used nearly daily for over a year, which I always found impressive.

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As Xencelabs's devices have 24 months of warranty, which my tablet still had, I thought I would just reach out to their support, to see if this falls under warranty - and to my pleasant surprise they actually replaced my tablet.

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I also asked if there is any information on the issue itself that some users experienced, and got following answer:

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This response I received, to me personally, doesn't make it sound like it is a sole user error.

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As I said, not everyone seems to have experienced this issue and I do know other artists using Xencelabs pen tablets, for even longer than I did, who never had this issue. Yet I wanted to mention it regardless, as this does seem to be an issue Xencelabs is aware of and working on, and can have an impact on the drawing (or in my case digital sculpting) experience eventually.

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Also, with other pen tablets I have used in the past, such as my first pen tablet, a Wacom Intous M, which I have also used for over a year, with me never having replaced the pen nib, I never had a problem like that.

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An issue I had exclusively with newer Wacom pen tablets (e.g. the Intuos Pro) was the rate at which I had to change the pen nibs. Due to the surface texture of the Intuos tablets (at least I believe that was the reason), the nibs ground down very quick, to an extent where I had to change them regularly. Increasing the tablet's pressure sensitivity to not having to press down as hard sadly didn't really help.

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With the Xencelabs pen tablet I'm actually still using the original nib that came with the pen. Although it certainly has worn down over time, it's minimal in comparison, and not at all as extreme as with the Wacom tablets, with me not having changed the amount of pressure I apply to the tablet when working.

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With 16h the battery life of the Xencelabs medium tablet, it is four hours longer than of my Wacom Intous Pro M. Over time it will of course decrease as for all battery powered devices, but so far after over a year I cannot complain at all.

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Support

During my time using the pen tablet I had to contact the Xencelabs support two times, once due to a shipping issue (not their fault though!) and the other time due to the mentioned surface damage above.

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I had the worst, most unbearable experiences with customer support in the past with various companies, but the Xencelabs support experience was absolutely fantastic.

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In case of the surface damage, they quickly acknowledged the issue with the surface damage and immediately offered me a replacement. Within a few days I received a brand new tablet.

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So far one of the most pleasant customer support experience, which is a huge plus!

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Conclusion

The Xencelabs pen tablet is by far the best pen tablet I have ever used, from the quality of the tablet (apart from the experienced surface damage) and accessories to its driver and user experience.

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Yet the issue with the surface damage, sadly makes it hard to wholeheartedly recommend the tablet, even though not everyone seems to have experienced this issue. Thus I won't make a recommendation here and let you yourself decide.

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Personally, I'm a bit conflicted, as for the price I would expect the surface to be more sturdy, and the response I received from Xencelabs doesn't make it sound like it is exclusively a user error. And as mentioned, I never had any such issues with any of the pen tablets I have used in the past.

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On the other hand, not everyone seems to have experienced this issue, Xencelabs did acknowledge it and replaced my pen tablet for a brand new one. Everything else and everything up until I encountered this issue worked perfectly fine for over a year, and overall the experience has been much better than with any other pen tablet I owned in the past.

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With the replacement I received I'm now looking at a brand new tablet, which I'm definitely going to continue using. It also makes me curious to see if the issue with the surface will reappear in the future.

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In any case, I hope this review has been helpful and given enough insight for you to possibly help you decide in case you were thinking about getting a Xencelabs pen tablet.