In the world of digital art and design, having a high-quality screen drawing tablet is essential for artists and designers looking to create professional-grade work.

Without a doubt, A large-screen tablet will provide a good user experience compared to a smaller one.

Wacom, Huion and XPPen are three top drawing tablet brands that every artist is familiar with.

Three standout models in the 16-inch category are the Wacom Cintiq 16, Huion Kamvas Pro 16 and the XPPen Artist 15.6 Pro V2.

All of these tablets are well-known for their innovative features, precision, and strong drawing performance.

But which of these screen graphic tablets best fits your artistic journey in digital drawing? Let’s discuss the key differences and see which one is better for you.

Wacom Cintiq 16 vs Huion Kamvas Pro 16 VS XPPen Artist 15.6 Pro V2 Comparison

Let’s start by having a quick look at all the features that Wacom Cintiq 16, Huion Kamvas 16  and XPPen Artist 15.6 Pro V2 offer.

Key Display Tablet Features in-depth comparison

Here’s a more in-depth analysis of the three tablets, These will help us better understand the pros and cons in each case.

Screen Resolution & Colors

As the name suggests – Wacom Cintiq 16, Huion Kamvas Pro 16, as well as XPPen Artist 15.6 Pro V2 comes with the same screen size of about 16 inches.

This 16” size offers perfect balance between having a good sized screen where the interface is big enough where you don’t have any problem selecting layers or brush size sliders but it’s still easy to move around.

In addition to screen size, you ideally want a screen with a good resolution and higher color accuracy, which determines the display quality.

Screen resolution determines how clear your display is. The Higher, The Clearer. Furthermore, The more color-accurate display means the screen has a wider color palette and can displays minute difference in colors.

Huion takes the lead in terms of clarity on the screen. The screen resolution of Huion Kamvas Pro 16 is 2.5K, Where the Wacom Cintiq 16 and XPPen Artist 15.6 Pro V2 have FHD 1080p resolution.

The lower 1080 resolution on 15.6-inch screen is decent and may not be a deal breaker, but some artists would prefer higher resolution.

In terms of color accuracy, Huion and XPPen takes the lead, Their display shows the top-tier 96% to 99% Adobe RGB, meaning that the colors produced on the them are more accurate and truer to life.

For comparison, the Wacom Cintiq 16 comes with a color gamut of 72% NTSC / 96% sRGB, which is decent enough but not as good.

Typically, the screen of Cintiq 16 comes pre-calibrated out of the box. In the case of Kamvas pro 16 and XPPen Artist 15.6 Pro V2, you have to play with color settings to reach its full potential.

Screen Surface

Both Wacom Cintiq 16 and XPPen Artist 15.6 Pro V2 comes with an anti-glare film that reduced glare and reflections, which enables them to be used in bright reflective environments.

The anti-glare film has a slight texture that gives you better control over the stylus. The texture feels balanced, it is neither too smooth nor too rough.

Downside is that the matte finish on the film erodes after a certain time due to oils or chemicals used to clean it leaving you with a sleek plastic feel towards the end.

Huion Kamvas Pro 16 use Anti-glare etched glass on the outer layer of screen, which can also reduce reflection and has paper-like texture.

AG glass has better wear and corrosion resistance as it is a permanent treatment to the glass that cannot be removed.

Parallax and laminated display

Parallax is an effect caused by the distance between where the pen tip touches the glass and where the mark appears on the screen. Since there is a glass panel, the Parallax is unavoidable.

In laminated screens, the display layer and the top glass are laminated together with no air gap in between. Laminated screens reduce parallax and make the screen brighter and colorful.

Both Huion Kamvas Pro 16 and XPPen Artist 15.6 Pro have a fully laminated display while Cintiq 16 does not.

Since Cintiq 16 does not come with a laminated screen, There is some parallax but it’s not bad, wacom has done a really good job of minimizing the parallax.

Stylus Pen

A stylus is one of the very important components of a drawing tablet. It can make or break your drawing experience.

The stylus from 3 brands all works on EMR, where they take their power from the tablet itself (wirelessly) and hence they do not need to be charged, very handy.

In addition, They all have 2 side buttons on the body. In the pen settings, you can configure these side buttons to any hotkey of your choice.

The difference is How a pen erases. Both XPPen and Wacom stylus pen include an additional eraser on the top end that allows the artist to delete the drawing by making their pen inverted. But huion stylus lacks this feature.

Pressure Sensitivity

Pressure sensitivity allow you to change the width or/and opacity of the strokes depending on how much pressure you apply on the pen.

This is a very useful feature that is used all the time whether you are sketching, creating illustrations, or blending colors.

Both Wacom and Huion styluses have a total of 8192 levels of pressure sensitivity, whereas the XPPen X3 Pro stylus has 16384 levels of pressure sensitivity, which is theoretically better. However, In real life, you won’t notice any difference.

If there are more than 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity, it becomes impossible to distinguish them apart. The reason for this is that they’re susceptible to even the slightest changes in applied pressure.

Tilt sensitivity

Just like pressure, these styluses can also detect and measure at what angle you have held the stylus.

Compared to pressure sensitivity, tilt sensitivity is not that important and most artists rarely use this feature. It works with only certain types of brushes that are specially made to work with tilt sensing styluses.

But in case you make a certain type of artwork or heavily use brushes such as spray bruh then you should pay attention to this feature.

On paper, Wacom, Huion, and XPPen styluses are all can detect tilt sensitivity up to 60 degrees. But in practical uses, the tilt sensitivity on the Wacom stylus is more stable and works better.

Initial activation force

The initial activation force is how much pressure you need to apply in order for the stylus to detect the touch and start drawing. The lower the initial activation force, the better.

Comparing the three styluses, the Wacom pro pen 2 has a slightly better activation force and it can detect the slightest of touch from the stylus.

The Huion PW 517 and XPPen X3 Pro stylus are also good in this regard. They have improved their pen tech, supports lower 3 g IAF, Greatly narrowed the gap with Wacom – 1 g.

In my experience, I feel that the Huion PW517 pen have a slightly lower IAF and more sensitive than the XPPen X3 Pro Stylus.

Drawing Performance

For a long time, the Wacom Pro Pen 2 is considered as a gold standard for a digital stylus, which performs the best in terms of performance and accuracy. This is also the same one they include with their top-of-the-line Cintiq pro tablets.

At present, stylus from competing brands such as Huion and XPPen have quickly caught up. Their newer stylus pens almost as good as the Wacom Pro Pen 2 and provides a very similar drawing experience.

You will get perfect strokes with very consistent pressure sensitivity and no pen wobble and pressure bumps. The pen works equally smoothly – at fast as well as slower speeds. You will only notice the difference it if you deliberately go looking for it.

Design and Build Quality

All 3 tablets comes with a thin and compact design. They allow you to easily change from one position to another or even use them on your lap if you want to get real comfortable.

Both Wacom and XPPen are made of plastic but the quality of the plastic used is actually really good. The tables feel strong and sturdy and with no flex or wobble to be found anywhere.

Huion Kamvas Pro 16 might look plasticky, it is made of metal that feels very dense and premium. You have a flat metallic panel at the back with two big rubber pads. The single piece metal wraps around the edges and meets the glass at the front which feels really nice to hold.

Shortcut Buttons

Both Huion Kamvas Pro 16 and XPPen Artist 15.6 Pro V2 comes with 8 shortcut buttons located on the left side of the tablet. All these buttons can be easily programmed to any shortcut of your choice.

In addition, The XP Pen Artist 15.6 Pro V2 adds a red roller wheel, which can allow you to zoom in and out by sliding your finger around the wheel.

On the other hand, Wacom Cintiq 16 does not have any shortcut buttons on the tablet, If you are among those artists who prefer to use hotkeys, you can get the Wacom Expresskey Remote. But this would be an extra cost.

Tablet Stand

Drawing on a display tablet while keeping it flat on the table is not ideal and can be uncomfortable to work on.

The Wacom Cintiq 16 has 2 built-in foldable tablet legs at the back of the tablet, which unfolds to raise the tablet to about ~10-20 degrees.

As for XPPen Artist 15.6 Pro V2, you get a AC 41 plastic tablet stand with a single angle of 20°. When collapsed, it’s quite thin making it easy to transport.

With Huion Kamvas Pro 16, you have the included tablet stand, which is fairly high quality with metallic parts and has six different height adjustments.

Plus the stand folds up into a slim and compact sheet of metal which makes it easy to carry in your backpack.

Other than the foldable stand, the Cintiq 16 also has holes at the back for the VESA mount. On the other hand, the back of the Huion and XPPen tablets does not have any VESA screw holes.

Connectivity

These three display tablets are not standalone drawing devices, so they need to be connected to an external computer in order to work.

The Cintiq 16 only supports 3-in-1 cable (HDMI & USB-A) for connection.

On the other hand, Both Huion Kamvas Pro 16 and XPPen Artist 15.6 Pro V2 support modern single USB-C to USB-C cable connection. This definitely eliminates cable clutter and improves portability.

Even if you don’t have USB-C port on your computer, you can also connect huion and xppen tablet by traditional 3-in-1 cable.

Compatibility and Drivers

All 3 display tablets are compatible with the popular operating systems Windows and Mac. You can use the major drawing and design software like photoshop, illustrator on these platforms with them.

All of them comes with free Windows or MacOS driver software that enables customization of pen settings, shortcut buttons, and other features.

All 3 companies provide reliable driver updates to ensure compatibility with the latest software.

Generally speaking, The Wacom tablet Driver is a tiny bit ahead of Huion and XPPen as it gives you more functions and better stability.

If you want to use your tablet with android phones or tablets, you can choose huion kamvas pro 16 or xppen artist 15.6 Pro v2, wacom cintiq 16 doesn’t support android devices.

Price and Value for money

Even though the three tables comes with similar tech specs but the difference in their price tag is pretty steep.

The  XPPen Artist 15.6 Pro V2 and even the Huion kamvas Pro 16 costs considerably lower than the Wacom Cintiq 16.

Wacom is an industry leader and thus prices its products higher. and Their tablets usually last longer than other brands.

For the most part, a Wacom Cintiq 16 is worth every penny. However, Huion and XPPen tablets provide much more value for your dollar.

Other Budget Options Recommended

If you’re looking for a 16-inch XPPen artist tablet with higher 2.5K QHD screen resolution, and willing to pay extra $100, the XPPen Artist Pro 16 (Gen 2) might be the better choice for you.

Final verdict

Overall, If you are looking for a good drawing tablet that gives you top-of-the-line features, especially 2.5K QHD Resolution without burning a big hole in your pockets the Huion Kamvas Pro 16 is a perfect choice.

The XPPen Artist 15.6 Pro V2 is also a great choice for budget-conscious artists. It also includes some of the desirable features – with X3 pro stylus and red roller wheel being particularly sought after – and combines this with an affordable price.

The Wacom Cintiq 16 only takes a small lead in stylus performance – specifically due to its lower IAF and better tilt sensitivity handling. If you are someone who value drawing performance, you should actually get the Wacom Cintiq 16.

Ultimately, Choosing the best one from these 3 tablets depends on your demands, preferences and budget.