When it comes to drawing pads for digital artists, for most the only name that means anything is Wacom. So ubiquitous is the Japanese graphics tablet manufacturer that the word “Wacom” can be used as a synonym for drawing tablets.

But Wacom tablets can fetch quite a pretty penny if you’re looking for anything of passable quality. Recently, however, XPPen is looking to shake up the market with its offerings, and the XPPen DecoPro is the brand’s champion product.

In South Africa, XPPen is also offering the DecoFun S and the DecoMini 7, but while the DecoFun is aimed at hobbyists and children, and the Mini is for quick edits on the move, the DecoPro has professional digital artists and editors in mind.

We found the DecoPro to be a great way for new artists to simply pick up a tablet, plug it in and get started. No fuss. No hassle.

Let’s break it down:

Plug and play

The fact that you simply have to plug the DecoPro into a USB port for it to start working is probably, for us, the highlight of the product. Long we have toiled to find Wacom tablet drivers to no avail. The DecroPro is on, and its pen works immediately without a battery.

No setup is required. Simply plug in the tablet, open your software of choice and get drawing. It easily replaces the space of a keyboard on a desktop and is very thin and light, so carrying it in a notebook bag is easy.

We tested the DecoPro in PhotoShop and took the pen’s sensitivity for a test drive. When using certain brushes, applying more pressure to the pen creates a larger effect on the digital canvass as if it was a real paintbrush.

It works as advertised and the large area of the pad really lends well towards digital painting. The pen glides freely and it is a joy to use. You can easily get carried away and make large arching strokes. It’s fun and easy.

In terms of the pen itself, there are two buttons near the point. The top one allows you to bring up an options menu to change the brush type, size and colour. While the button allows you to draw without the sensitivity setting.

It’s light, feels comfortable in hand, and isn’t too bad to look at either. In case you break the tip or wear it down with use, there are eight more replacement nibs available in the pen’s container.

It is very clear that the XPPen DecoPro is made with right-handed people in mind because placing the tablet with the dial on the left effectively makes you draw upside down. It’s supposed to be used with your left hand while you draw with your right.

Customisable hotkeys and ease of use

The dial itself has a few functionalities, but nothing too mind-blowing here. You can use it to zoom in or zoom out or pan up and down your work by spinning it. The middle area allows you to use the mouse pointer by touch, but usually, artists will have mice to work with so we’re not too sure about the functionality of this outside of “Hey, it’s here and we didn’t really know what else to do with it.”

We also often touch the top of the dial by mistake, which completely threw what we were doing out of whack. It would be nice to completely disable this feature, seeing as really there is no need for it.

There are then eight buttons, four above the dial and four below. These are all tied to certain hotkeys which the manufacturers thought were most used by artists. These include a hotkey to save your work, one to switch to the grab tool, and others.

The button hotkeys can be reset and mapped to your own liking through the DecoPro’s latest optional driver software, with which you can also remap your screen size to the drawing area of the tablet and a few other settings. However, nothing here is too deep or in-depth.

XPPen DecoPro – Verdict

You can pick up the XPPen DecoPro for R2 799 from outlets like Takealot, and this price point only adds to the plug-and-play nature of the tablet. Together, they make a formidable combination for new artists, looking to get into the digital world.

The DecoPro will take you far in this regard, and you will remember it fondly, quirks and all when you eventually move up to a more expensive, more sturdy and more customisable graphic tablet.

More seasoned professionals will find the DecoPro limited, and will soon become frustrated with the sensitive touch dial. So perhaps they may want to skip this one.

However, university design, animation or digital art majors will find the DecoPro to be an affordable partner for their degrees. Apart from the limitations of its design, the DecoPro is a real-deal graphic tablet, capable of producing beautiful work in the right hands.

FINAL SCORE: 7 OUT OF 10.