What if your creative pen tablet can now also be your primary monitor? This new creative editing and drawing tool from Huion offers to maximize your efficiency and comfort when editing your photos.
Pen tablets and pen displays are always helpful for editing, especially those that involve manual selective editing and retouching. With all the new tools made available by more advanced editing software and AI-backed processes, what photographers have to do to achieve the perfect images that they envision has become significantly easier. Pen tablets and displays allow us to make precise selections and adjustments but in the past have always meant being an extra tool to take space on our desks or in our bags. Because of the addition of a number of features, this new pen display from Huion offers not just to improve your editing workflow but also make it more comfortable and efficient.
The Huion Kamvas Pro 19
The Kamvas Pro 19 is an 18.4” (diagonal) pen display made up of a body that is a 17.6 x 10.7 inch (448.9 mm x 272.4 mm) slate with a thickness of just 0.8 inches (21.3 mm) which based on other pen displays both from Huion and as well as other brands, is remarkably thin considering its size and features. Within that is a 16.1 x 9 inch (409 x 230 mm) active area made up of a 4K resolution IPS panel that is responsive to the supplied pen(s) and is also touch responsive. All of these are housed in anti-glare etched glass that disperses light as it reflects on the surface and at the same time prevents moisture from adhering to the surface to smudge.
The Kamvas Pro 19 comes with a built-in stand that folds out from the rear panel. However, this also means that it is limited to two viewing angles/heights (one with the stand folded and one with it flipped out). This makes the usage of the pen display very specific to the proper viewing angle or height and would require one of three factors. One could either use a chair or a desk with adjustable height, or make use of the VESA mounting points on the rear panel of the pen display to use more flexible stands or arms.
The Kamvas Pro 19 also has more universal and simplified ports and connectivity. On the top right corner are two USB-C ports and a 3.5 mm audio port. One of the two USB-C ports will be for the host cable and the other for the power supply. The user has two options when it comes to connectivity. The simpler approach would be to connect the pen display directly to the USB-C port of the computer and the other cable directly to the supplied 65W GAN power supply.
The added benefit of this would be that if the laptop being used is capable of USB-C charging then this connection will also supply power to the laptop which may or may not be enough depending on the specific model being used. The other option is to use the 3-in-2 cable that has a USB-C, USB-A, and full-sized HDMI on the host end plus one USB-C for power and one USB-C for data on the other end. On the perpendicular edge is a single power button that doubles as the OSD menu button and a handy switch that toggles between activating and deactivating the finger touch feature for when the user prefers only to use a pen.
Display Resolution and Color
The most obvious yet impactful factor about this pen display is the resolution that it offers with regard to the size of the display. This 18.6” panel offers a 3840 x 2160 (4K) display at 238 ppi with a 1,000:1 contrast ratio and a refresh rate of 60 Hz. Considering the typical viewing distance when working with a pen display, the size and resolution that this offers has considerable pixel density. The panel has a peak brightness of 220 nits which is bright but can definitely be brighter but considering the fact that color perception must be well considered in most use-cases for this, it should not be used in the presence of overwhelmingly strong and heavily colored lights. However, it would be good if there is an option to go brighter for situations with less sensitivity to color and contrast.
The 4K IPS display covers 99% of the sRGB, 96% of the Adobe RGB, and 98% of the DCI-P3 color spaces and displays beyond 8-bit color with the convenient capability of FRC. Each unit of the Huion Kamvas Pro 19 comes with its own factory calibration report that indicates the color accuracy testing results. This particular unit has an average color variation of Delta E<1.05 while the product line in general supposedly has a standard of Delta E<1.5. This basically says that with proper calibration in the lighting environment in which the display is to be used, it can achieve astounding color accuracy whether as the main display or as secondary to a desktop monitor or laptop screen.
Pen and Touch Input
Another notable addition to the Kamvas Pro 19 is that it comes with two pens instead of one. It comes with the usual standard pen similar to other (older) Huion tablets and a thinner/lighter pen for comfort. Both pens now have three side buttons that can be programmed to have their own shortcut functions and a tail eraser for quicker actions. Both pens have a resolution of 5,080 lines per inch with a range of 16,384 different pressure levels. The pens also come with extra plastic and felt nibs in an all-new carrying case that doubles as a desk stand for both pens.
Application and User Experience
Personally, I’ve always thought of pen displays as something not necessarily made for photographers but more for illustrators and designers. At least for myself, pen displays have so much more to offer than what most photographers need. To make things simple, that means that not all photographers might need a pen display as feature-packed as this, but that also means that the features and capabilities can definitely make the editing experience more convenient, more efficient, or even more enjoyable.
Coming from experience from other pen tablets and pen displays, the Kamvas Pro 19 basically merged all the useful features into one panel. Since the pen display is now also a viable color-accurate screen that accepts 10-point finger touch inputs for gross actions and pen inputs for finer actions, in addition to the availability of the Keydial Mini as a programmable shortcut console, the pen display can now function as a stand-alone primary display connected to a desktop CPU or a laptop in clamshell mode. Of course, it can also function as part of an array of displays depending on what the host computer can operate. Regardless, the high-resolution display with versatile input options and color accuracy offers a wider range of usability.
As a photographer, the two main uses of this pen display for me are for when I manually brush and blend in different elements in creating composite images and meticulous retouching using the various tools available on different editing software. Previously a pen display or tablet (for me) would only be useful for the two tasks mentioned above. However, with this one being a multi-touch panel it can also be used directly on global post-processing and RAW developing workflows such as those on Adobe Lightroom, Camera RAW, and even newer AI-driven editing software and plug-ins like Radiant Photo. Just as previously mentioned, having a touch display might not be that necessary for such tasks but the fact that it has become one of multiple options through this device makes it remarkable. Personally, I love that I can now use one hand with a pen to make the precise inputs while using my other hand to navigate, scroll, and zoom in and out of the image with the most minute hand movements.
Overall, the Huion Kamvas Pro 19 merges a lot of features that we would get from multiple tools and devices into a single panel that can do all of them. A high-resolution display with reliable color accuracy (when properly calibrated) that works with your hand and the pens simultaneously giving you the option of setting aside the keyboard and mouse while editing all for the sake of improving and optimizing the physical experience of editing and retouching.
What I Liked
- Great size option for an up-close screen
- 4K resolution with average color accuracy of Delta E <1.5
- 10-point multi touch with a quick switch
- Added pen options
What Can Be Improved
- Built in stand might be made more flexible with more folding sections
- L-type cable options might improve desk arrangement
- Additional buttons or joy pad for OSD menu navigation
- Programmable buttons on the side can further increase stand-alone functionality
I'm sure it works. I've seen the same complaints about it that I see about anything else, like sometimes people get one with a dead pixel or something like that, The issue is that if something goes wrong with your iPad and you have a dead pixel you can go to an Apple store and if they don't do something about it then you can literally take them to court over it so they just tend to give you a new one if you just bought it or give you options to repair it if not.
if you buy a product from China and something goes wrong they do not give a **** about you. cuz you can't do anything about it if they tell you no.
Open a North American office that is beholden to us court systems, and have some sort of extremely transparent repair policy that's very lenient early on, and that's the only way you'll get people like me to buy things like this.
Is there a MAC capture program that could record video of writing with the pen on screen? If so this looks like it could be a better method of drawing on screen in Final Cut Pro X and recording it to use in FCPX. Even better if you could just capture the writing and not the reference image below it. Right now we use an ipad for this.