XPPen Magic Drawing Pad Review

Pen tablet and drawing display manufacturer, XPPen, joins the foray into illustrator-first Android tablets.

With the introduction of the XPPen Magic Drawing Pad, a tablet that offers all artists and illustrators from old to new a canvas that brings the portable Android experience together with awesome Pen Display features.

Could this be the BEST alternative for digital illustrators on the go?

–Let’s find out.

What’s in the Box?

Apart from the Magic Drawing Pad itself, potential buyers can expect the following to come included:

• Rugged Rubber Case: A protective case that ensuring that the XPPen Magic Drawing Pad remains protected from accidental drops. It even features a slot for the stylus at its rear that also acts as a short-tilt stand for the tablet itself when in use.
• X3 Pro Pencil: EMR (electromagnetic resonance) tech + 16,000 levels of pressure sensitivity.
• Sim Ejector: For access to expandable storage (NO SIM slot).
• Nib Ejector: Used for replacing Pen nibs.
• 8 Spare Nibs: In the box users can expect and extra 4 spare nibs, and 4 more felt nibs.
• 15W Charger and cable: The Magic Drawing Pad charges via USB Type-C.

Build and Design

The XPPen Magic Drawing Pad’s construction feels great to the touch. It weighs 599 grams and is quite thin at 6.9mm.

In front, the display gets an X-Paper layer on top, more on that later.

But at first glance it looks just like a matte screen protector. At the top bezel resides the 8MP front-facing sensor along with the proximity and light sensor, and what seems to be an unspecified depth sensor to its right.

The back panel is made out of a polycarbonate material with a very nice, almost paper-like finish, that detracts most fingerprints and smudges with ease (oily fingerprints are its kryptonite.)

We can also find the 13MP Ai camera module at the top right along with its LED flash.

For I/O, on the left side is the power button, and two speaker grilles that house two out of four stereo speakers.

On the right is microSD card tray for expandable storage, USB Type-C port for charging and data transfers, a charging LED, and another pair of speaker grilles that the other two out of four stereo speaker drivers reside in.

Up top, is the volume rocker and two noise-cancelling microphones; And at the base are a pair of slots and contact points for what seems to be for accessories to be released on a later date?

Display, Multimedia and Biometrics

The XPPen Magic Drawing Pad features a 12.2-inch IPS display with a resolution of 2160 x 1440 pixels and a peak brightness that can reach up to 360 nits.

User can expect pretty good color accuracy out of the box with 77%, 109%, and 82% coverage of the NTSC, sRGB, and Adobe RGB color gamut(s) respectively.

–No wild refresh rates on this panel.

But something it does have up its sleeve is X-Paper display layered on top of the TFT IPS panel. It provides a paper-like drawing experience that also does a good job mitigating fingerprints and smudges!

The X-Paper layer is also made with AG Etched technology which gets rid of any reflections and glare that could strain the user’s eyes and distract them from their work.

This layer also provides TÜV Rheinland certification which means, users can also rest assured they’re protected from the tiring blue-light emitted by screens from prolonged drawing sessions.

When it came to media consumption like watching movies and shows on Netflix, the XPPen Magic Drawing Pad was good enough.

Obviously, we aren’t getting deep OLED blacks here but for someone who doesn’t even know that is;  it’s definitely more than enough!

The quadruple stereo speakers on this tablet won’t be knocking anyone’s socks off for its depth, but the clarity for the most part is pretty good with bass or low-ends mostly shallow.

Distortion is present at higher volumes in sacrifice for loudness, which can be a pro for podcast listeners.

 

Software, Apps and Ui

For software, out of the box the XPPen Magic Drawing Pad runs on Android 12 skinned with XPPen UI V4.0 on top.

XPPen leaves Android 12 mostly stock in essence; We still get the circular icons (which can be change in the themes settings,) Google Apps, Pop-up windows,  three-finger swipe up for Split Mode, and swipe left from the home screen for Google News Feed; all vanilla android staples, present.

But we can also find notable changes with the notification drop-down menu and some cool features that could pair well with varying creative workflows.

There’s PC Mode, which transforms the Android tablet interface into a versatile desktop PC experience.

It essentially turns all apps and games into windowed mode when opened and also gives users a taskbar at the bottom similar to Samsung’s Dex.

There’s also NXT Vision, a display enhancing feature that optimizes the display’s image contrast, sharpness and brightness when viewing photos, watching videos, or playing games.

The XPPen Magic Drawing Pad also came preinstalled with Android drawing apps, including Bamboo Paper, Canccepts, ArtRage Oils, ibisPaint, and Medibang Paint.
And even productivity apps like Spacedesk, Start, and WPS Office.

Stylus and Drawing

Going back to the X3 Pro Pencil included in the package, it’s a sleek and highly portable pen stylus that pairs up very well this the Magic Drawing Pad.

It does not magnetize to anywhere on the tablet, so you do need the included case to stow the stylus away attached to the tablet itself.

But the feel of this X3 Pro Pencil in combination with the X-paper layer is amazing! It’s literally a pen-display in an Android tablet form-factor.

When doodling around on ArtRage Olis, Sketchbook, or Clip Studio Paint, I just felt right at home coming from the XP-Pen Artist Pro 16 (Gen 2).

I’m genuinely amazed by how far drawing tablets have come and kind of want this experience to be accessible on a wider range of Pro model tablets in the future.

A novel stylus feature the XPPen Magic Drawing Pad gets is compatibility across the range whole range of X3 Pen Stylus’ from XPPen.

Although I have experienced some weird pressure sensitivity issues here and there. What happens is my lines come out thicker than I expected them to which is easily remedied by just undoing, and re-drawing.

I’ve also noticed this could be palm rejection issue, since I haven’t noticed it happen when Handwriting touch mode is off (this can be found in the quick-access drop down menu.)

Overall I really like the feeling of drawing on this tablet minus the aforementioned little bugs.

Performance and Benchmarks

The beating heart of the Magic Drawing Pad is the MediaTek MT8771 or Kompanio 800T 12nm chipset that provides clock speeds of up to 2.4 GHz, that features an ARM G57 MC2 GPU; suitable for everyday tasks and use-cases.

The Magic Drawing Pad is configured with 8GB of RAM and a generous 256 GB of internal storage, which is expandable via microSD of up to 512 GB, providing potential buyers and artists ample storage for all their apps and games.

Now this is an Android tablet made with Digital Illustrators in mind, but in our opinion it still provides some not-too-bad synthetic benchmark scores, check them out below:

• Antutu V10.1.9: 392,799
• Geekbench 6 Single-core: 737
• Geekbench 6 Multi-core: 1,894
• Geekbench 6 GPU OpenCL: 1,227
• Geekbench 6 GPU Vulkan: 1,231
• 3DMark Wild Life: 1,185 (Avg fps 7.10)
• 3DMark Wild Life Extreme: 330 (Avg fps 1.98)
• PCMark Work 3.0: 10,486
• Antutu V10.1.9 Storage: 384,495 

Cameras

Optics isn’t the XPPen Magic Drawing Pad’s strongest suit, but when it came to video calls it was more than suitable.

It features a 13MP main sensor at the rear with an 8 MP front camera at the top bezel with what seems like a depth sensor next to it. Consequently, users could use this front-facing sensor to capture their reactions and expressions to use as reference for their illustrations.

The Camera app gets a features a Stop Motion mode that allows shooting in frame rates of 12fps, 24fps, and 30fps.

For video, with the main sensor we get support for resolutions of 1080p – 480p and records at 30 frames per second across all resolutions.

Battery and Connectivity

Powering the Magic Drawing Pad is an 8,000mAh battery, that provides AMAZING battery life give the user is someone who likes to sketch or draw mainly for spur-of-the-moment sessions of creativity.

With that said, we mainly used the Magic Drawing Pad for doodles, and sketches with some Netflix and Spotify consumption here and there, and we haven’t had to charge this tablet in days!

Although, in our standard video loop test which involves looping a FHD video with the device set to 50% brightness, volume muted, and switched to Airplane mode to account for mixed usage variables; the XPPen Magic Drawing Pad garnered a result of 10 hours and 13 minutes.

So we may infer that this Android tablet won’t be a well-received option for those who want the longest lasting tablet in the market.

It also features 15W Quick charging capabilities, and it takes about 2-3 hours to fully charge starting from 0-15% which is relatively slow compared to the competition.

In hindsight, unless the user was someone drawing for almost half a day non-stop, this shouldn’t be the biggest issue. And even then, we recommend someone like that use the tablet while plugged in.

Furthermore, it’s also worth mentioning the included X3 Pro Pencil does not need to be charged.

Overall, the battery life isn’t the best in the market, but it definitely isn’t a slouch for taking on road trips and vacations with the intent of using what the tablet is made for. (Which is drawing by the way.)

For connectivity, if you caught it at the start, this tablet does NOT features SIM support. The Magic Drawing Pad features WiFi 802.11 and Bluetooth 5.1 as wireless connectivity options.

Final Thoughts

The XPPen Magic Drawing Pad is promising package for all kinds of digital artists and illustrators looking for a pen-tablet or display but maybe don’t mind using Android illustration applications.

Is it something that can replace a pen display hooked up to a computer?

–Well in my opinion, somebody who already has a creative workflow with those tools might have a hard time transitioning from all of that to a standalone drawing tablet experience.

But if you’re somebody who has merely touched the surface or loves the idea of doodling or sketching on something like an iPad Pro, this tablet could possibly be right up your alley at a lower cost.

I think it’s perfect for students AND professionals who share my last sentiment.

But with all that in mind, how much does it cost?

Direct from XPPen’s Online Philippine store 52, configured at 8GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage, it’ll set potential buyer’s back PHP 33,999.

But at the time this article was written, it’s currently on sale for PHP 28,999.

What do you guys think of the XPPen’s pioneer Android tablet, the Magic Drawing Pad?

–Let us know below.

 

What we Liked:

• Drawing experience.
• Display. (for drawing).
• Stylus.
• X3 Cross-stylus support.
• Build and construction.

What we Liked LESS:

• Stereo Speakers.
• Battery life.
• Cameras.
• LCD panel.

XP-Pen Magic Drawing Pad (9494G) specs:
12.2-inch 2160 x 1440 109% sRGB 360 Nits
X3 Pro Pencil 16384 Pen Pressure (compatible with other X3 stylus’s)
MediaTek KOMPANIO 800T (MT8771)
Mali G57- MC2 GPU
8GB RAM
256GB RAM (expandable up 512GB via microSD)
13MP rear camera
8MP + 8MP front camera
WiFi
GPS
Bluetooth 5.1
USB Type-C
XP Pen V4.0. based on Android 12
8,000mAh battery
599g (weight)
279 x 192 x 6.9 mm (dimensions)