If you want to venture into the world of digital painting and art, you need to own the right drawing tablet.

Buying a new graphics tablet can seem like a daunting task, especially since you seem to come across many brands here – wacom, huion, xppen and more.

Although there are several popular brands, Huion and Wacom are two most popular makers or giants in this area. However, What’s the difference between them, and which brand is better for you?

In this guide, I will compare and explain the differences between the two competitor brands and their products. You’ll then able to pick one that best fits your style.

Company History of Wacom and Huion

Huion Animation Technology Co., Ltd. was founded in Shenzhen, china in 2011. Since 2015, the number of product users of the brand has been increasing very quickly – over 2 million users woldwide.

Huion produces, manufactures, and markets pen tablets, pen displays, LED light pads, and many other interactive handwriting input devices.

With Kamvas and Inspiroy series, it is a national high-tech firm with multiple patents and autonomous R&D capabilities.

Wacom Co., Ltd. is a Japanese firm that specialises in graphic tablets and related devices.

It is the pioneer and leader of digital drawing technology, which was formed in 1983 in Ageo, Saitama, Japan.

Wacom is well-known for its Wacom One, Intuos, and Cintiq series drawing tablet models.

From cinema and animation to auto-design and manga, Wacom comprises many creative customers worldwide.

Wacom also provides revolutionary user interface technologies and solutions to successful medical, educational, and other companies.

Current situation of Wacom and Huion

In the early days, Wacom drawing tablets were superior to almost every other tablet in the market. But the problem with Wacom was – their tablets were expensive. This led to drawing tablets being inaccessible to many artists including beginners and hobbyists.

That is where Huion entered the scene. The main focus of Huion was to make drawing tablets affordable and accessible to artists.

In the early days, Huion was always playing catchup to Wacom tablets but at the same time, they were getting better and more experienced with the launch of every new tablet.

Since 2019 or 2020, Huion has taken a big leap both in terms of features and build quality of their tablets. Their affordable drawing tablets have gotten a lot of attention from artists – both beginners and professionals.

At present, both Wacom and Huion are top-rated brands – trusted by thousands of artists.

Contrary to the popular belief – After having looked at a number of tablets from both these brands, I can easily conclude that drawing tablets from both Wacom and Huion are very comparable to each other both in terms of quality and features And you can’t go wrong with either of them.

If you are someone looking to buy a new drawing tablet, you would be happy to know there are a number of really good tablets both cheap and expensive that Wacom and Huion have to offer.

Wacom Vs. Huion: Key Drawing Tablet Features Comparison

As we can see from the brief overview, both these brands have become widely popular among their users owing to their technological innovation and diverse product range.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a beginner or a professional artist, there’s definitely a Huion or Wacom product that will suit your needs.

Hence, we’ve highlighted some key features that you must consider while purchasing any of the drawing tablets created by these brands.

Whether you’re a professional or a beginner, these features will help you to understand the drawing tablet’s quality and performance. Thus, it will become easier for you to pick the one that is most suited to your requirements.

1. Size of active area

If you choose to get a graphic tablet without screen, like wacom one, intuos or huion Inspiroy, The size of active area is a defining feature. Furthermore, the size of a drawing tablet is a major factor that determines its price.

An active working area refers to the area on your tablet that the stylus can react to and draw. Its size can make or break a user’s experience – The larger the tablet’s active area, the more freedom in detailing.

While small tablets with compact surface areas are fine for photo editing, the small surface area will make it difficult for you to handle large gestures or broad strokes. Moreover, you might find it difficult to use the selection tools on Photoshop in a compact surface area.

If you want to buy a drawing tablet for digital painting and sketching, I recommend medium to large tablets. Ideally, look for a tablet with an active area that’s at least 8 (20 cm) or 10 inches (25 cm) on the long side.

In terms of size and surface area, Huion have a wide range of products. you can easy to find an Inspiroy tablet with big 10 * 6 inches active area at the price of under $60.

On the other hand, Wacom only provide two size for entry-level pen tablets include wacom intuos and wacom one: 6*4 inches (small version) and 8*5 inches (medium version).

If you want to get a tablet with an active area that’s at least 10 inches (25 cm) on the long side, the only choice is to get the Intuos pro large version, which is super expensive at more than $400.

2. Display Size and Quality

When comparing the displays, the most significant point is its size. The size of the tablet’s screen has the most prominent influence upon its price.

Both Wacom and Huion offer a wide range of differently sized products, from small 12-inch to huge 27-inch, therefore Wacom and Huion are equal here.

If you choose a monitor for editing and drawing, the resolution and color accuracy would be another primary consideration alongside the size as a display graphic tablet.

In terms of screen resolution, wacom gives their entry-level and budget-friendly pen displays like wacom one 13 and cintiq 16 with FHD 1080p resolution, while equip their cintiq pro line with 4k uhd resolution.

Huion does the same thing, you can find 1080p resolution, 2.5k resolution and 4K resolution on their Kamvas pen display monitors, depending on how much you want to pay for it, such as Huion Kamvas Pro 19 (4K).

In terms of color accuracy, wacom offers decent 72% NTSC/ 99% sRGB color gamut on their entry-level and budget-friendly pen displays like wacom one 13 and cintiq 16. on the other hand, you can find professional 98% Adobe RGB gamut on their cintiq pro line.

Huion had horrible color accuracy a few years ago, But They have gotten better about this. That is because Huion’s revolutionary Quantum Dots Technology (QLED) enables a 1:1200 contrast ratio and excellent color gamut (from 120% sRGB to 98% Adobe RGB) on the screen.

The huion displays color calibration wasn’t ideal Out of the box. It’s the class-leading if you’re willing to do some displayable colours calibration during setup.

In addition, Wacom tablets and Huion tablets are both manufactured with matte, anti-glare screen surface that are easy to use in bright light. You can also expect the fully laminated screen from wacom and huion for Minimal parallax.

3. Stylus Pens & Nibs

The stylus is often considered one of the most important parts of display tablets for artists, with active, battery-free pens being the most popular style currently.

Battery-free pens are more durable, reliable and easy-to-use. They use inductive current from the tablet’s surface to power the digital pen.

Both Wacom and Huion tablets have a full line of battery-free EMR pens. So, you need not worry about replacing and changing batteries from time to time.

Actually, you can hardly find a battery-powered pen on the modern drawing tablet market since 2020, even the cheapeset model – Huion H420X (4.17 x 2.6 inches active area) has a battery-free stylus.

Another factor to consider is how a pen erases. Both Wacom and Huion have pens like the wacom pro pen 2 or Huion PW600 comes with an extra feature that allows the artist to turn their pen upside-down and erase the drawing.

Other pens require the user to push one of the side buttons while erasing. However, these pens enables the most smooth and natural erasing motion.

The tip of stylus need to be replaced after a certain amount of use. Both the Wacom and Huion tablets, come with some extra nibs (felt and flex nibs) so that you won’t run out very soon. on the other hand, Huion usually provides more.

4. Pressure Sensitivity

To make the experience of digital art as close to real drawing as possible, drawing tablets are made pressure sensitive.

This means just like a real pen, marker, or pencil, the applied pressure an artist puts upon the screen determines how thick/thin and light/heavy the lines are when drawn.

Moreover, various models offer different sensitivity levels. As the levels increase, the tablets become more sensitive to the amount of applied pressure and pick up even the faintest details in your strokes.

Cheaper drawing tablets like wacom one and intuos usually don’t come with the best pen, usually 4,096 levels of pressure.

Wacom tends to only sell their best pens with the more expensive intuos pro and cintiq series tablets – comes with 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity.

Huion tablets have at least 8,192 levels of pen pressure sensitivity. while their newer tablets have highest 16,384 levels of pen pressure sensitivity. So in this regard, Huion is the winner.

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

As a result, there is no need to compare the sensitivity of these two firms’ pens. It’s unlikely that you’ll notice the difference.

5. Tilt Sensitivity

Tilt support allows the stylus to work even more like traditional tools. This means that when the stylus is tilted, graphics tablets recognise and adapt to the direction and thickness of the line accordingly.

Pen tilt is a great feature for illustrators and painters since they do a lot of shading, blending, and other motions where tilt support adds realism. It’s not as useful for graphic design, however, since graphic designers more commonly work with uniform lines.

Tilt support is growing more common but isn’t standard across all drawing tablets.

Both Huion and Wacom have tablets with and without tilt support. No matter the company, if you buy the cheapest drawing tablet, like Huion’s Inspiroy H640P or the Wacom Intuos, you won’t be getting tilt support.

However, The Wacom stylus has much better tilt sensitivity. The pointer shifts off-center on the Huion’s stylus when you tilt it. The Wacom has no such issue. It’s not a deal breaker, but it’s noticeable.

6. Drawing Performance

Many professional artists and illustrators prefer Wacom tablets for their precision and accuracy.

Huion provide similar functionality and drawing experience as Wacom but still not as good, especially older tablet models.

If you got a older huion tablet like Huion Inspiroy 1060p (2019) with PW100 stylus that is battery-free, support 8192 levels of pressure sensitivity and ±60° tilt support .

As a comparison, wacom one pen tablet has a battery-free stylus that support 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity and ±60° tilt support.

Although wacom stylus has lower pressure levels, but it has a better experience, that‘s because it has lowest or minimal Initial Activation Force and More accurate tilt recognition.

Initial Activation Force (IAF) is smallest pressure that activates the pen. High initial activation force (IAF) means that you have to press slightly harder for the tablet to register your pen strokes.

The Wacom Pen IAF is between 1g to 3g. On the other hand, older Huion stylus like Pw100 has at least 10g IAF.

Luckily, Huion’s newer pen tech 3.0 (2022) offers 3g IAF – Huion Kamvas Pro 16, while newest pen tech 4.0 provide lower 2g IAF – Huion Kamvas 16 (Gen 3).

So if you want a better drawing experience from huion tablet, get their newest model. Here’s a tip: avoid Huion drawing tablets that are more than 3 years old.

7. Express Keys

Express keys are incredibly common in drawing tablets as the programmable buttons are useful for customizing shortcuts such as Undo, Save and Zoom.

Almost all of Huion models offer these buttons, with some models adding a Touch Ring or touch bar that allows you to zoom in and out by sliding your finger on it. If the huion kamvas model doesn’t have buttons, you can get an included ExpressKey remote.

As compared to Huion, Wacom only offers buttons or express keys with limited models, most of time, you can’t find any buttons on tablet. If you want to use Express Keys, you need to buy the ExpressKey remote separately.

8. Multitouch

Multitouch allows you to use two fingers to pinch and zoom, or to rotate your canvas. This helps you work more efficiently and intuitively.

However, this feature is not as well as on an ipad or samsung tablet, and most users won’t be put off by the lack of multitouch.

Multitouch is offered by Wacom across their Intuos Pro and Cintiq Pro lines, whilst Huion only provides on select high-end models, such as the Kamvas Pro 19.

9. Connectivity

Most Wacom and Huion devices connect to another computer to work. This means you’re also going to want to consider how to connect them to your computer.

If you choose the screenless graphic tablet, You will have the option of wireless connectivity, or wired to the computer. Consider a wireless model if you want it to be more portable or less cluttered with cables.

Luckily, Both Huion and Wacom offer Bluetooth connectivity on limited models, which needs you to pay slightly more for this.

If you opt for a screen drawing tablet, using cables is still necessary. Both Wacom and Huion comes with a convenient, modern USB-C to USB-C cable connection available on several small size tablets, such as wacom one 13 and Huion Kamvas 13 (Gen 3).

10. Build Quality

Wacom tablets have a premium feel and use higher-quality materials to ensure high customer satisfaction. Huion tablets appear to be slightly lower in this regard.

But, while Huion trails behind Wacom, the differences in build quality are almost imperceptible, and they are getting even better as new tablets are released.

In fact, many professionals who don’t have budgets use Huion tablets without issue or regret.

11. Compatibility

Both Wacom and Huion tablets are easily compatible and work well with almost all types of art software.

You can use them on Linux, Android, Chrome OS, Mac 10.10 or newer and Windows 7 or newer.

12. Driver

Drawing tablets require some form of driver to function properly with a computer, just like any other device.

The wacom driver software seems better in functionality, and stability, which are much less of a problem. Huion drivers tend to be prone to glitches and might stop working out of nowhere, especially older tablet models.

In addition, huion driver software doesn’t support different profiles for different programs, whereas Wacom’s does.

Luckily, Their newer tablet model has improved a lot. If you encounter driver problems, just reinstall the driver.

13. Warranty

Warranty is something you should be looking out for when investing in a drawing tablet.

Wacom’s Pro models come with a 2-year warranty, whilst most other tablets, including other Wacom products and Huion, have a 1-year warranty.

14. Support

Huion support is available by email, Skype, social media, or chat. However, keep in mind that they are only available during China Standard Time business hours. Therefore, an answer could take several hours, depending on the time of the day.

Wacom customer support offers phone assistance in most major countries, as well as online chat help 24/7. So if you need urgent help, Wacom is the company to choose.

15. Price

Price is probably the go-to feature that everyone looks at first. You can notice a difference between Huion and Wacom in this area immediately.

Huion tablets are reasonably priced for the performance they provide. Wacom digital drawing tablets are often 2 to 3 times more expensive.

For my experience with Huion you can get a larger, more accurate tablet for less money than Wacom.

16. Standalone Drawing Tablet

A standalone drawing tablet has a built-in computer inside them – and they do not need to be connected to an external computer in order to work.

This minimizes cable clutter and makes the drawing setup streamlined as you don’t need to take the laptop with you.

Wacom produces their standalone drawing tablets that runs on Windows 10 or 11. It comes in two sizes – Wacom Mobile Studio Pro 13 inch and 16 inches.

The Standalone drawing tablet from Huion is called Kamvas Studio 16, which is a 15.8-inch drawing tablet computer that also runs on windows 11.

These tablets are great for anyone who wants to bring their full-fledged workstation out of the home and use desktop art software on the go.

Conclusion

Wacom tablets have better digital pens, a higher build quality, and better manufacturer support than the Huion models.

Going for a Wacom tablet might be a bit expensive, but If you can afford it and want the absolute best, Wacom is the one.

On the other hand, if you’re on a strict budget, Huion is a good alternative too. Huion tablets, in many ways, perform as well as Wacom tablets for far less money.

Don’t worry about the drawing performance of huion! if you are a beginner or an occasional user, Huion drawing tablets can be your go-to option, simply because they are more attainable and still highly functional.

Explore More: The 12 Best Wacom Cintiq Alternatives Of 2025