Gear Talk: Xencelabs Pen Tablet Medium Bundle

The Xencelabs Pen Tablet Medium Bundle comes in a very neat pack

First of all let´s speak about why a graphic tablet can be nice to use for the postproduction of landscape photographs. Sure, mouses are great and many great photographers i know only use mouses for their editing and create amazing results. However for me personally, when i started using graphic tablets my workflow improved greatly. With a mouse i personally can´t manage to do very precise editing tasks, like brush strokes when i am using techniques like Dodge and Burn. I noticed that when i use a tablet, i manage to be more precise in all kinds of local adjustments that I apply manually. This is not that surprising when comparing the accuracy of a really good mouse with the one from a graphic tablet with a quality pen.

Now that you know that I do enjoy using graphic tablets for my postproduction of landscape photography here´s a shocker: I had not been using a tablet for editing in quite a while. I missed using a tablet, however something drew me off.

As my older tablet had stopped working I bought a new one. By a manufacturer you probably all know- I mean the brand name is basically the first one you think about when looking for a tablet.

I had not only bought a new graphic tablet- I have also changed my complete studio setup from Windows to Mac. With this change came the desire to keep my desk as cable free and clean as possible. Somehow I noticed how this just makes it more easy for me to concentrate and get work done.

Here´s the catch: The brand new device didn´t really work on my brand new Macbook Pro. As the tablet I am talking about uses Bluetooth 4.2 it simply created a whole mess of all my bluetooth devices and the end result was such a terrible lag that I simply couldn´t edit images with this tablet. I was forced to plug in the cable to get a useable device. Another thing that drove me kinda nuts is that I didn´t manage to configure the express keys of that tablet to the one setting that I enjoy the most: beeing abled to change the brush size on the fly without removing my hand with the pen from the tablet. While this was possible on my years old device, the new one simply didn´t give that option anymore. Probably I was just too dumb to set it up (I am that guy) but nevertheless it was that final drop of annoyment about that thing that I had bought for several hundred euro.

I stopped using graphic tablets for editing as all this annoyed me!

I made my way around editing with a mouse- by now there´s nice devices that make it a bit easier than the mouses I had in the past. But still I always felt uncomfortable while editing. And in fact it made me loose the fun in editing my pictures and I spent a decent amount of time without producing much new work.

Then i found an alternative brand that caught my interest. The Xencelabs Pen Tablet Medium Bundle seemed to be getting great reviews. I had to try one.

And let me give you a tldr: it instantly worked like intended on my setup- just the way I want things to be. I was very pleased about this fact alone!

Luckily Xencelabs uses Bluetooth 5.0 which means that you can connect all kinds of Bluetooth devices at the same time without any hiccups. This is not only great for bigger offices where many people work at the same time- it already prooved to be awesome just for me in my tiny studio. Most devices that i have connected to my Macbook Pro are using Bluetooth. From the keyboard over the mouse to my sound and last but not least… the graphic tablet!

Designwise it is a very sleak tablet. It´s quite slim with a thickness of 8mm and it still feels very sturdy.

With the massive active area of 262 x 147mm one has a lot of room to work- more than enough in my opinion!

In regards to the pressure sensitivity (this factor is very important while actually using the tablet) the pen´s pressure sensitivity comes in at 8192 pressure levels. Having such a precise range on tablet and pen is one of the main advantages against editing with mouses as these don´t even come close to such values for the most part.

The Xencelabs Pen Tablet Medium Bundle also comes with the so called Quick Keys which is a separate device, with a screen that is fully customizable to use with all kinds of programms. This little thing is so awesome that I ended up using it almost all the time no matter if I am editing, browsing the net or working on google sheets (which I do quite a bit). Funnily the other tablet i mentioned earlier had the most important functions for my workflow removed from their version of Quick Keys- i was not abled to change the pen size and opacity anymore without having to enter the menu for these in Adobe Photoshop. This kept annoying me quite a bit and when we are talking about the creative editing of landscape photography every little draw back keeps adding up.

Luckily with the Xencelabs Quick Keys i can customize the buttons completely to how i need them and this can even be done for several different kinds of creative software. Very nice! The same can be said about all other functions of the tablet and also the pens- you can easily customize each button with the intuitive and sleek driver/controlling Software by Xencelabs.

I will not bore you with all the technical details that you can easily find out on the Xencelabs website- my way of reviewing something means: I use it.

I either like it or dislike and sometimes a little bit of both. But in this particular case i have yet to find a single flaw about the product. It just works!

All things considered i find that the Xencelabs Pen Tablet Medium Bundle is a great bang for your buck. Not only do you get a graphic tablet that works perfectly after installing the needed drivers, i particularly love that one can easily power the tablet and Quick Keys on and off with a little button.

This way you are not wasting the battery of the devices during times where you are not using them.

While it is not very important for the kind of work i personally do with a graphic tablet, getting 2 different pens is a nice bonus. For the post processing of landscape photography any of both the provided pens does a great service. If you are more into graphic design, drawing and other typical use cases for graphic tablets you may find that each pen works particularly well for a special discipline.

The packaging is neat and you even get a drawing glove and a nicely made sleeve for the graphic tablet in case you want to take it with you on travels.

I am happy that i have a working device that doesn´t slow me down when i sit down to edit a picture and instead allows me to speed up my workflow.

That´s all i need from a graphic tablet and this is what the Xencelabs Pen Tablet Medium Bundle enhances me to do.

I love it when smaller companies start releasing products focussing on the needs of their customer base and i am sure Xencelabs has a great future ahead!