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Platform: Browser, Windows, Mac OS, Linux, ChromeOS Previously known as plain old Gravit, Gravit Designer is a full-featured vector design app suitable for all manner of jobs, from screen and icon designs through to presentations, illustration and animation. The laptop for an architect should meet some requirements such as minimum of 4GB RAM, at least 14-15 inch screen, great RAM, processor, and Graphics card to run things smoothly. The main job of an architect is involved with the blueprint.
- Best Non Mac Laptop For Music Production
- Best Desktop For Graphic Designers 2018
- Top Graphic Design Software 2018
- MacOS is the predecessor of the other operating systems, and most computer aficionados either love it or hate it. Many times the attachment to the actual OS is secondary to a user’s allegiance with the Apple ecosystem and culture.
- To us, portability is one of the most important factors when looking for the best laptop for graphic design. The Best Laptops For Graphic Design in 2018. Our graphic designers rely on the best laptops to create an excellent design for banners and foamcore signs for our customers. Instead of spending precious time filtering the best laptops for designers, we’ve handpicked our designer’s top favourites for you.
- A 2018 Dell with responsive HD touchscreen, back lit keyboard, 8th gen Intel Quad Core processor and vivid sound and graphics. Spacious 8GB memory, 15.6' screen, and Bluetooth capability. Perfect for work and play.
Your guide
- Justin Krajeski
After spending 30 hours researching and testing the top five contenders, we found that the Microsoft Surface Book 2 is the best laptop for creative professionals. The Surface Book 2 had some of the fastest 4K rendering speeds we tested, and it has an excellent keyboard and trackpad and a healthy variety of ports. Its 4K display is the most accurate of the Windows laptops we tested this year, though it isn’t accurate enough for video color grading or print production work; if you do those things, pick up the 15-inch Apple MacBook Pro.
Our pick
Microsoft Surface Book 2 (15-inch)
The Surface Book 2 has powerful specs and the best battery life and most accurate screen of any Windows laptop we tested. It’s reliable enough for most creative tasks, but not quite accurate enough for video color grading and print production.
Buying Options
The Surface Book 2 configuration we recommend costs around $2,900—we know! Keep reading—and it has a 4K display, an eighth-generation 1.9 GHz Intel Core i7-8650U processor, 16 GB of RAM, and a 512 GB solid-state drive. It also comes with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 with 6 GB VRAM, a powerful graphics processor that can handle demanding tasks such as quickly exporting 4K footage in Adobe Premiere Pro or gaming. The Surface Book 2’s keyboard is clicky and comfortable to use for long periods of time, and its trackpad is even better: It tracks smoothly and accurately, and it executes gestures and other Windows-related tasks with ease. It also has all the necessary ports and connections: two USB 3.0 ports, a USB-C port (though not Thunderbolt 3), as well as a full-size SD card reader, and a proprietary Surface Connect port. It also had the longest battery life of any laptop we tested this year by about 20 minutes, and you can even detach its screen and use it as a tablet if you want.
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Also great
Apple MacBook Pro with Touch Bar (15-inch, 2019)
The 2019 MacBook Pro has the best display of any laptop we’ve tested, and it’s accurate enough for video color grading and print production. Its keyboard is shallow and its battery life is short, but it’s the most powerful option for those who prefer Apple.
Buying Options
If you need a laptop with a screen precise enough for print photo production or video color grading, get the Apple 15-inch MacBook Pro (2019). The MacBook Pro’s 15.4-inch Retina display has a resolution of 2880×1800—lower than the 4K screens on the Surface Book 2 and the XPS 15 Touch—but in our tests it was more color accurate than its competition, and it’s the only one of our picks that’s technically accurate enough for color grading and print production work. It also reproduced more of the sRGB color gamut than the Surface Book 2, and it supports the DCI/P3 color gamut while our top pick doesn’t. It has the best trackpad we’ve used on a laptop, as well. But it has a shallow keyboard, it lacks legacy ports, it has a high price tag, and it suffers from a shorter battery life than we’d like. We recommend the $3,150 model—which is about $250 more than the Surface Book 2—with a 2.3 GHz ninth-generation Intel Core i9 processor, 16 GB of RAM, 512 GB of solid-state storage, and Radeon Pro Vega 20 dedicated graphics with 4 GB of memory.
Budget pick
Dell XPS 15 Touch
The Dell XPS 15 Touch has fast 4K rendering speeds and decent battery life, and it costs almost $1,000 less than the Microsoft Surface Book 2. Its screen is less accurate, but you can buy a great 4K monitor with the money you save and still have some left over.
Buying Options
If you’re looking for a cheaper option, you don't need to do precise color work, or you don't mind relying on an external monitor when you do, get the Dell XPS 15 Touch. It is not as accurate as the Microsoft Surface Book 2, much less the MacBook Pro: Its reds, in particular, were so oversaturated that we don’t recommend it for photo editing or color grading video. Instead, pair the Dell XPS 15 Touch with our favorite 4K monitor pick, the HP Z27, which is accurate enough for photo and video production work, and buying the XPS 15 plus the Z27 still costs less than one Microsoft Surface Book 2.
We recommend the configuration with an eighth-generation, Intel Core i7-8750H processor, 16 GB of RAM, a 512 GB solid-state drive, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050Ti, and a 15.6-inch 3840×2160 IPS touchscreen. At the time of this guide's publishing, this configuration cost around $1,930. It was a few seconds faster than the Microsoft Surface Book 2 at exporting 4K video in Adobe Premiere Pro. It’s about as portable as the Surface Book 2, and its keyboard and trackpad are decent but not as enjoyable to use. Unfortunately, its webcam is located below its screen, and it fell about a half hour behind the Surface Book 2 in battery-life testing.
Everything we recommend
Our pick
Microsoft Surface Book 2 (15-inch)
The Surface Book 2 has powerful specs and the best battery life and most accurate screen of any Windows laptop we tested. It’s reliable enough for most creative tasks, but not quite accurate enough for video color grading and print production.
Buying Options
Also great
Apple MacBook Pro with Touch Bar (15-inch, 2019)
The 2019 MacBook Pro has the best display of any laptop we’ve tested, and it’s accurate enough for video color grading and print production. Its keyboard is shallow and its battery life is short, but it’s the most powerful option for those who prefer Apple.
Buying Options
Budget pick
Dell XPS 15 Touch
The Dell XPS 15 Touch has fast 4K rendering speeds and decent battery life, and it costs almost $1,000 less than the Microsoft Surface Book 2. Its screen is less accurate, but you can buy a great 4K monitor with the money you save and still have some left over.
Buying Options
The research
Why you should trust us
Best Non Mac Laptop For Music Production
Wirecutter has been researching and testing laptops since 2013, and our PC team has more than 37 years of collective experience reviewing all kinds of laptops—in addition to the 60 hours we’ve spent researching and testing laptops for video and photo editing work over the past two years.
For this guide, we interviewed 11 creative professionals—three music producers, three product or graphic designers, one 3D modeler, two photographers, a game developer, and a Web developer—to find out what they need in a laptop. Among the experts we spoke to are a composer for Bob’s Burgers, a developer and composer behind the video game Night in the Woods, a senior 3D modeler at Weta Digital, and a graphic designer and illustrator whose work has appeared in The New York Times (parent company of Wirecutter).
Who should get this
If you’re a creative professional looking for a laptop that can perform demanding tasks—including photo editing, video editing, graphic design, drawing, programming and developing, game design, and audio production—on the go, you should get what we call a power notebook.
Ezcap for mac 2018. If you work in print production or color grade video, you should buy a MacBook Pro.
While an ultrabook can perform some of these tasks, a power notebook will let you do more and faster; it will also have a dedicated graphics card, more RAM, often a more powerful processor, and a larger, higher-resolution screen that’s better for doing creative work. A gaming laptop or workstation has the power for these tasks, but a power notebook is more portable, durable, and stylish. (We don’t cover mobile workstations here—most people who need one have very specific needs or will get it through an employer—but if you need a recommendation, Notebookcheck’s top 10 list is a good place to start). Power notebooks are more expensive than most people need though—some cost upwards of $2,500—so it makes sense to spend the money only if you need one for your job.
If you work in print production or color grade video, you should buy a MacBook Pro. Our Windows pick’s display is accurate enough for other video and photo work, though. If you’re in Web development, music production, or game design, and you don’t need production-quality color accuracy, or need it for only part of your workflow, you can buy a less expensive, less color-accurate laptop like our budget pick. For print-quality work, you can even buy our budget pick and pair it with our favorite 4K monitor, which is more accurate than our top pick, for about $400 less.
Apple’s MacBook Pro line has long been the standard-bearer of power notebooks, and most of the creative professionals we interviewed use Macs. But over the past two years, Windows manufacturers have largely caught up with (and in some cases surpassed) MacBooks when it comes to sleek designs, great screens, and powerful hardware—though that doesn't matter if the software you use only works on Macs. We have picks for both Mac and Windows users.
How we picked
The most important features in a power notebook (in rough order of importance) are the processor; memory; storage; dedicated graphics; screen size, resolution, and quality; keyboard and trackpad; weight; ports; and battery life. But not all creative professionals need the same features. The photographers and graphic designers we spoke to emphasized their need for a good screen, for example, while product designers and audio producers prioritized a machine’s available ports.
These are the features that you should look for in a laptop for creative work, but the order will vary based on the work you do:
- Processor: We recommend a quad-core (or better) for processor-intensive workloads like rendering 4K video, 3D modeling work, and heavy multitasking.
- Memory: We recommend 16 GB as a minimum for smooth performance while multitasking (especially if you’re running RAM-hungry software like Photoshop). A 4K video editor and a 3D modeler who frequently render large scenes told us they want 32 GB of RAM, so we noted laptop models that have the option to upgrade.
- Solid-state storage: A solid-state drive (SSD) can read and write data much faster than a traditional hard drive. Having an SSD speeds up any task that requires accessing data, like booting up your laptop, saving and loading files, or rendering video. As for the amount of storage space—the more, the better. A 512 GB SSD is the most cost-effective option for those with large media collections.
- Dedicated graphics: A discrete GPU has its own processor and memory (VRAM) that handles graphics processing and allows the laptop’s processor and memory to manage other workloads concurrently. Dedicated graphics are especially important if you work in 4K video editing, 3D rendering, or animation. In 2018, we tested a Windows laptop with Radeon RX Vega M GL graphics against laptops with Nvidia GTX 10-Series graphics, and found that the Vega M GPU was much slower, so we don’t recommend laptops that have it for creative work.
- Display: Apple’s 15-inch MacBook Pro models have a 2880×1800 resolution, which we consider to be the minimum for laptops in this category. But our research and expert interviews showed that many creative professionals prefer the highest resolution possible—in this case, 4K resolution (3840×2160)—for tasks like photo and video editing. For this reason, we prioritized high-quality laptop screens, with accurate colors and wide gamuts out of the box. sRGB color gamut coverage is important because that’s the display mode most people use most of the time. In laptops with an expanded color gamut, like the Dell XPS 15 and the MacBook Pro (2019), we also tested DCI/P3 color gamut coverage, because that’s what you’re paying more for—a wider range of colors. The screen should also be IPS, not TN, because IPS panels provide much better viewing angles and color reproduction.
- Keyboard and trackpad: Even if your work setup includes an external keyboard and mouse, your laptop’s keyboard and trackpad should be responsive and comfortable to use for long periods of time when you need them. A poor keyboard and trackpad can ruin an otherwise decent laptop.
- Size: Around 80 percent of the creative professionals we interviewed use 15-inch laptops, and we think laptops that weigh around 5 pounds with that size screen provide the best balance of screen real estate and portability. (We didn’t consider mobile workstations because they’re too bulky and heavy to be reasonably portable.)
- Ports: Most of the photographers, audio producers, and developers we spoke with require a variety of ports on their laptops. Different ports matter to different users, but a couple of USB 3.0 Type-A ports are universally useful, as is an HDMI port. A Thunderbolt 3 port is handy for future-proofing. (If you buy a laptop with only Thunderbolt 3 ports, check out our guide to the best USB-C adapters, cables, and hubs.) If you’re a photographer, an SD card slot will be important, too.
- Battery life: A laptop should have long enough battery life to get you through most of an eight-hour workday, but most creative professionals we spoke to have their laptops plugged in at all times because they work in a fixed location. For this reason, we tested battery life, but it didn’t disqualify any of our contenders.
We checked laptop manufacturers’ websites—companies like Microsoft, Dell, Asus, HP, Lenovo, Razer, and MSI—and found 23 models that matched our criteria. We looked at reviews of those laptops from trusted sources like CNET and Ars Technica.
We eliminated models with dealbreaking flaws mentioned in reviews, like a dull screen or poor build quality, as well as laptops that were unavailable. Then we used what we learned from speaking to 11 creative professionals—three music producers, three product or graphic designers, one 3D modeler, two photographers, a gaming developer, and a Web developer—about their laptop needs, in 2016. Using their expert input, we winnowed our list to five models: the 15-inch Apple MacBook Pro (with Radeon Pro 560X graphics), Asus ZenBook Pro 15, Dell XPS 15 Touch, HP Spectre x360, and Microsoft Surface Book 2. We tested the 15-inch Apple MacBook Pro with Radeon Pro Vega 20 graphics in May 2019. We’re interested in testing the Razer Blade 15 4K Touch and the Lenovo ThinkPad P1 in the future, and we will update this guide when we do.
How we tested
We worked with Chris Heinonen, senior AV staff writer for Wirecutter, to test the contrast ratio, color accuracy, and gamut of each laptop’s display using customized tests in the CalMAN 2016 software-calibration suite.
For contrast ratio, we expect a result of at least 1,000:1, and all of the laptops we tested for this guide passed that threshold. It wasn’t a differentiating factor for our picks. The CalMAN tests also produce DeltaE 2000 numbers for each screen, which show us how close the displayed color is to what it’s supposed to be; the lower the number, the better. A value of under 1.0 is nearly perfect, and under 2.0 is sufficient for print production work. At around 3.0, you begin to see a difference between the screen and its reference.
Color gamut, or the range of colors that can be accurately represented on a device, is also important, so we used our CalMAN tests to determine how much of the sRGB color gamut (and, when applicable, the DCI/P3 color gamut) each laptop screen could reproduce. The ideal score is 100 percent; our numbers will not go past that, because reporting numbers larger than 100 percent can give the impression of full gamut coverage even in cases where that isn’t true.
To test each laptop’s rendering speed, we worked with our photography team to export 4K video footage using a compression preset in Adobe Premiere Pro. We tested each laptop’s real-world battery life by setting each laptop’s screen backlight to 150 nits (candelas per square meter; cd/m²) and ran a Web-browsing battery test that cycles through Web pages, email, Google docs, and video. Because we set each laptop to the same brightness, the results were directly comparable. Finally, we used each laptop for at least one workday to get a feel for its keyboard, trackpad, screen, and speakers, and we traveled with them to and from a coffee shop to get a feel for portability.
Our pick: Microsoft Surface Book 2
Our pick
Microsoft Surface Book 2 (15-inch)
The Surface Book 2 has powerful specs and the best battery life and most accurate screen of any Windows laptop we tested. It’s reliable enough for most creative tasks, but not quite accurate enough for video color grading and print production.
Buying Options
The Microsoft Surface Book 2 is the best Windows laptop for creative professionals because it has the best combination of performance, screen quality, and portability. In tests, the Microsoft Surface Book 2 showed that it’s powerful enough to handle demanding workloads, and it renders 4K video very fast—faster than most of the competition. It has the most color-accurate screen of any Windows laptop we tested—though not as accurate as the MacBook Pro, the only laptop we recommend for video color grading and print production work—and it covers 95 percent of the sRGB color gamut. Plus, the Surface Book 2 has a great keyboard and trackpad, it has a variety of ports, and it’s light enough to carry around for work. It has the longest battery life of all the laptops we tested, too, at 7 hours, 20 minutes. You can even detach its screen and use it as a tablet if you want. But its screen isn’t quite accurate enough for print production work, it’s much thicker than the competition, and when closed it has a wide gap near its hinge thanks to that detachable screen.
The Microsoft Surface Book 2 and the Dell XPS 15 Touch were, by far, the fastest at exporting 4K footage in Adobe Premiere Pro; shorter bars indicate better performance. We tested the 15-inch MacBook Pro (2018) with a six-core Intel Core i9 processor; the eight-core i9 processor in the 2019 model may be a bit faster.
The Surface Book 2 we recommend has a 15.6-inch 3840×2160 IPS display, an eighth-generation 1.9 GHz Intel Core i7-8650U processor, 16 GB of RAM—which isn’t upgradable—an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 with 6 GB VRAM, and a 512 GB solid-state drive. In real-world performance testing, the Surface Book 2 exported our 4K footage sample in 2 minutes, 5 seconds, just 5 seconds slower than the Dell XPS 15 Touch, although this difference is within the margin of error.
The Microsoft Surface Book 2 had the most color-accurate display of the Windows laptops we tested, although none of the Windows laptops we tested were as accurate as the Apple MacBook Pro, and we don’t recommend them for video color grading or print production work. In our CalMAN test, the Surface Book 2 had an average grayscale dE2000 of 2.6, which means that images are mostly free of color tint, aren’t washed out, and details are visible in dark shadows, so the images on your screen will look like the creator intended. (Lower is better: A score below 1.0 means the difference between the displayed color and a reference is invisible to the eye when side by side; a score under 2.0 is sufficient for print-production work; and a score below 3.0 means the differences between the display and a reference are considered indiscernible when in motion.) The Microsoft Surface Book 2 measured a 2.9 score in ColorChecker, 3.0 in Saturation Sweep, and a 2.8 in color points; all of which test the display’s ability to accurately show a variety of colors’ hues and saturations.
A wide color gamut is important for tasks like photo editing because if you can’t see the full gamut, some of the colors you’re seeing are inaccurate. We found that the Microsoft Surface Book 2’s screen covers nearly all (95 percent) of the sRGB color gamut; which most people interested in serious video- and photo-editing will be using. It lacks support for the DCI/P3 color gamut, but the creative professionals we spoke to weren’t as concerned with DCI/P3 as they were with sRGB. The MacBook Pro (2019) covers more of the sRGB color gamut (99.8 percent), and a lot of the DCI/P3 color gamut (75.9 percent).
The Surface Book 2 had one of the best keyboards we tested this year. (Laptop Mag measured 1.2 millimeter of key travel. The Dell XPS 15 and Apple MacBook Pro both feel shallower, with 0.8 millimeter and 0.7 millimeter of key travel, respectively.) Its keys bounced back when we used them, and they offered an easy and enjoyable typing experience. The Surface Book 2’s trackpad has a crisp physical click when pressed, and we never experienced any issues with palm rejection or gestures, like using two fingers to right-click, scroll, and zoom. The medium-size touchpad fit the size of our hands better, which felt less awkward to use than the MacBook Pro’s huge one, but your mileage may vary.
The Surface Book 2 has the smallest width of any laptop we tested at 13.5 inches, though its 9.9 inches in length made it longer than all of the other laptops we brought in; but the size differences from model to model weren’t so major that they were noticeable in our testing. The biggest difference between the Surface Book 2 and the competition is its thickness: In part because of its detachable screen and odd hinge, it's 0.88 inch thick, with a large gap between the screen and keyboard at the hinge, while the Apple MacBook Pro is just 0.38 inch, and the Dell XPS 15 Touch is 0.63 inch thick. The Surface Book 2 is on the lighter side of the laptops we tested, though, at 4.2 pounds; all of the power notebooks we tested were between 4 pounds and 4.6 pounds.
The Surface Book 2 has all the necessary ports: two USB 3.0 ports, a USB-C port (though not Thunderbolt 3), as well as a full-size SD card reader and a proprietary Surface Connect port. We’d like to see Microsoft incorporate a Thunderbolt 3 port into its line of Surface Books in the future, since it’s the fastest, most versatile port—it can transfer data at speeds up to 40 Gbps, and carry power and display data over a single cable—and many other companies have now incorporated Thunderbolt 3 into their laptops.
The Microsoft Surface Book 2 had the longest battery life of any laptop we tested, at 7 hours, 20 minutes; longer bars indicate better performance.
The Surface Book 2 had the longest battery life of any laptop we tested, at 7 hours, 20 minutes in our Web-browsing test. This means that it should last a full day of work, although those with heavier workloads should expect shorter battery life. While the Surface Book 2 had the longest battery life, the Apple MacBook Pro had one of the shorter battery lives we tested, at 5 hours, 29 minutes. Our budget pick had 6 hours, 53 minutes of battery life, too.
The Surface Book 2’s screen is detachable—you can remove its top half from the keyboard by pressing a dedicated key to unlock the hinge. Then you can use the Surface Book as a 1.8-pound tablet with integrated graphics to draw, take notes, watch videos, or browse the Web. It’s compatible with the $100 Surface Pen stylus, but we weren’t able to test it. The Surface Book 2 has its own Surface Connect port, so it can be charged separate from the keyboard. This detachable screen is a neat addition, especially for illustrators and artists, though it’s not a requirement for laptops in this category.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
The Surface Book 2 is much thicker than the competition when it’s closed, and it has a wide gap near its hinge because of its detachable screen. With its lid shut, the laptop measures 0.88 inch thick near the hinge and 0.59 inch at its thinnest point; comparatively, the MacBook Pro is just 0.38 inch thick, and the XPS 15 Touch is 0.63 inch thick. The Surface Book 2’s thickness is caused in part by the hinge we mentioned, and in part because the Surface Book 2’s screen half contains components that allow it to be detached for use as a tablet. Dirt or dust can fall into this opening and gunk up your screen and keyboard. We haven’t experienced or read reports of any damage to the screen or keyboard, but this is a poor design decision nonetheless.
If you want a Mac: MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2019)
Also great
Apple MacBook Pro with Touch Bar (15-inch, 2019)
The 2019 MacBook Pro has the best display of any laptop we’ve tested, and it’s accurate enough for video color grading and print production. Its keyboard is shallow and its battery life is short, but it’s the most powerful option for those who prefer Apple.
Buying Options
If your workflow requires macOS, Apple’s 15-inch MacBook Pro (2019) is the best option. The newest MacBook offers solid performance and the best screen and trackpad of any laptop we’ve tested, and it’s the only one of our picks that’s technically accurate enough for video color grading and print production work out of the box. The MacBook Pro has a shallow keyboard, the battery in the 2018 model we tested lasted only 5 hours, 29 minutes, and the machine lacks legacy ports—which nearly half of the creative professionals we interviewed said was a disqualifying inconvenience. But even so, the 15-inch model is the only MacBook powerful enough for creative professionals.
We recommend the 2019 15-inch model with a 2.3 GHz eight-core ninth-generation Intel Core i9 processor, 16 GB of RAM, 512 GB of solid-state storage, and a Radeon Pro Vega 20 dedicated graphics card with 4 GB of memory—a configuration that costs about $3,150 at the time of publication. It also has a 15.4-inch, 2880×1800 Retina display. (You can customize your MacBook Pro with 32 GB of RAM instead if you know you need the extra memory.)
The configuration we recommend offers performance that in general is slightly better than that of the Microsoft Surface Book 2. The 2018 MacBook Pro we tested took an average of 3 minutes to export 4K video footage with Adobe Premiere Pro 12.1, about a minute longer than the Surface Book 2 took. But when we retested the 2018 MacBook Pro with the latest version (13.1.2) of Adobe Premiere Pro, it took just 1 minute, 33 seconds to export. We suspect Adobe further optimized hardware encoding on macOS between these two versions of Premiere, and the 2019 version should be a bit faster than that. (We’ll be testing new Windows models for comparison in the coming months.)
The 2019 15-inch MacBook Pro had the most color-accurate display out of the box and a wide color gamut, making it the only one of our picks that’s technically accurate enough for print production work. In our CalMAN test, the MacBook Pro scored an average grayscale dE2000 of 1.8, much better than the Microsoft Surface Book 2’s score of 2.6. (The closer to zero, the better.) It had an impressive score of 1.4 in the ColorChecker test; its Saturations and color points scores both landed at extremely accurate 1.1 point. We found that the MacBook Pro covered 99.83 percent of the sRGB color gamut and 75.86 percent of the DCI/P3 color gamut; the Dell XPS 15 Touch was the only laptop that covered more of both gamuts than the MacBook did, although its colors weren’t nearly as accurate.
The 2019 MacBook Pro has a shallow keyboard, with keys that offer only 0.8 mm of travel according to Laptop Mag. Even so, the new fourth-generation keyboard should be more durable than previous models due to silicone covers that prevent dust and dirt from getting below the keys and “new materials” that Apple claims will make the keyboard more reliable. After a while, you may become accustomed to the less-clicky, short-travel keys of the MacBook Pro, but even with the keyboard’s improvements, it still isn’t as enjoyable to use as that of the mid-2015 MacBook Pro. The 2019 MacBook Pro’s trackpad is the most accurate we’ve used on a laptop; you can click anywhere on the touchpad and receive the same response because it has no hinge, and its haptic feedback is gratifying. Its width can occasionally be annoying, though.
Despite seeming like a nifty feature, the MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar, which replaces the traditional row of physical function keys (as well as the Escape key) with a touch-sensitive strip of virtual buttons, was occasionally a nuisance, disrupting our workflow. And although you can use the Touch Bar for quick and easy timeline scrubbing, its lack of physical keys tends to be a particular hassle for developers, graphic designers, and other creative professionals, who rely heavily on keyboard shortcuts and muscle memory to do their work. The addition of Touch ID is convenient for unlocking the laptop and making purchases, though.
The 2019 MacBook Pro is a smidgen bigger than the Microsoft Surface Book 2, at 13.8 inches by 9.5 inches, but it weighs about 0.2 pound less, at 4.02 pounds. It’s also much thinner with its lid closed, at 0.38 inch, versus the Surface Book 2’s 0.88 inch. It has four Thunderbolt 3 ports, which allow the laptop to charge, transfer data, and connect to displays from any of its ports. But it has no legacy ports, something that nearly half of the creative professionals we interviewed in 2016 said was a dealbreaker. This lack of traditional ports requires creative professionals to change their workflows—which likely includes lots of peripherals—to include multiple adapters, cables, and hubs for connecting crucial accessories, and that costs money, time, and convenience. But the 2019 MacBook Pro is the only MacBook with a discrete graphics card, so creative Mac professionals will have to stock up on dongles and deal.
We’ll run a new round of battery tests on the 2019 MacBook Pro for our next update, but the 2018 MacBook Pro (which is very similar to the newer model) didn’t perform well in our battery life test, running for 5 hours, 29 minutes; this result is low compared with what we saw from our other picks, and it means that the MacBook Pro won’t last a full workday without being charged. The Microsoft Surface Book 2 lasted for 7 hours, 20 minutes, nearly 2 hours longer, and our budget pick, the Dell XPS 15 Touch, lasted for 6 hours, 53 minutes, nearly 1.5 hours longer.
Budget pick: Dell XPS 15 Touch
Budget pick
Dell XPS 15 Touch
The Dell XPS 15 Touch has fast 4K rendering speeds and decent battery life, and it costs almost $1,000 less than the Microsoft Surface Book 2. Its screen is less accurate, but you can buy a great 4K monitor with the money you save and still have some left over.
Buying Options
If you want a cheaper option, or if you need a laptop for music producing, game design, or Web developing, we recommend the Dell XPS 15 Touch. Although its screen is much better at displaying accurate color than your average laptop’s screen, it isn’t as color accurate as the Apple MacBook Pro or the Microsoft Surface Book 2, and its reds in particular were so oversaturated that you can’t rely on it for color grading video or still images unless you pair it with an accurate external monitor. It quickly exported 4K video in Adobe Premiere Pro, though, and its battery life is nearly as long as our best contenders. But its webcam is located in an inconvenient place below its screen.
For around $2,100—almost $1,000 less than our top pick—the XPS 15 Touch has a 15.6-inch 3840×2160 IPS touchscreen, an Intel Core i7-8750H processor, upgradable 16 GB of RAM, a 512 GB solid-state drive, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050Ti graphics card with 4 GB of VRAM. In real-world performance testing, the Dell XPS 15 Touch exported 4K footage with Adobe Premiere Pro five seconds faster than the Microsoft Surface Book 2 (within the margin of error), at 2 minutes flat.
Its screen is much better than the HP Spectre x360’s and the Asus ZenBook Pro 15’s, but it isn’t as color accurate as the Microsoft Surface Book 2’s, and it wasn’t reliable enough for accurate video and photo editing. In our CalMAN test, the Dell XPS 15 Touch scored an average grayscale dE2000 of 2.0, which is very good, better than the Microsoft Surface Book 2’s 2.6; it means that grays will be mostly free of color tint, so images will look as the creator intended. We found the reds were oversaturated in our ColorChecker test, where it scored a 3.0, and all of the colors in the Saturation Sweep were too saturated; it scored an average dE2000 of 2.6. It also had a bad score of 5.0 in color-points testing; its reds and blues were very oversaturated, and its greens and purples may have hue errors, which means that you shouldn’t rely on this screen for accurate video- and photo-editing work. It’s a good budget option if you don’t need accuracy above all else, or if you can pair it with a color-accurate monitor.
If you plan on using your XPS 15 Touch somewhere with enough room to house an external monitor, we recommend pairing it with our favorite 4K monitor, the HP Z27. The Z27 monitor has great, even CalMAN scores across the board, which we noted while we evaluated 4K monitors. In our ColorChecker test it scored at 2.68 points, and its Saturation Sweep came in at 2.42 points. It easily beat the Microsoft Surface Book 2, which scored 2.9 points in the ColorChecker test and 3.0 points in the Saturation Sweep, and much less variability in accuracy between colors. Buying the XPS 15 Touch and the monitor will cost less than one Surface Book 2, too. But we only recommend buying the XPS 15 Touch for photo editing if you're able to use an external monitor 100 percent of the time that you’re doing editing work.
The Dell XPS 15 Touch was able to display 100 percent of the sRGB color gamut, even more than the Microsoft Surface Book 2’s 95.2 percent. But gamut doesn’t matter as much as color accuracy when you’re working in video and photo editing.
The Dell XPS 15 Touch’s keyboard is shallower than we’d like; Laptop Mag measured 0.7 mm of travel. Although key travel is on the shallower end of the spectrum, and its keys aren’t as punchy as those on the Windows Surface Book 2, it’s still bouncier and more responsive than what we experienced with the MacBook Pro or the Asus ZenBook Pro 15 we tested. Its trackpad was the perfect size for us in testing; it was easy to navigate Web pages and click where we meant to. Gestures worked well, and zooming in felt easy and natural.
We only recommend buying the XPS 15 Touch for photo editing if you're able to use an external monitor 100 percent of the time.
The XPS 15 is a little bigger than the Surface Book 2 at 14 inches by 9.3 inches, and it weighs a little more, at 4.5 pounds. The size and weight difference weren’t noticeable in everyday use, though. It’s thinner than the Surface Book 2 when its shut; we measured 0.63 inch, thinner than the Surface Book 2 by a little more than 0.2 inch. The XPS 15 Touch has a useful mix of old and new ports: one Thunderbolt 3 port—which our top pick lacks—one USB 3.0 port, an HDMI slot, an SD card reader, and a Noble lock slot. It also has a useful battery status indicator.
The Dell XPS 15 Touch lasted 6 hours, 53 minutes during our battery life test, about 30 minutes less than the Microsoft Surface Book 2, but long enough for a day spent recording and producing music, or completing a Web design project.
The Dell XPS 15 Touch’s webcam is inconveniently placed below its screen. If you frequently make video calls and you’re concerned about meeting participants seeing up your nose, you may want to consider our other picks.
What to look forward to
HP announced the Spectre x360 15 at the CES 2019 trade show. It’s the first HP laptop to feature an OLED display, plus an eighth-gen Intel Core i7 processor, 16 GB of RAM, and 512 GB of SSD storage.
The new Razer Blade offers a 15.6-inch 4K touchscreen display and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card for $2,900. We plan on testing it soon, and we will update this guide with our thoughts.
The new Lenovo ThinkPad P1 has a 15.6-inch 4K touchscreen display and an Nvidia Quadro P2000 graphics card for $2,300. It could be a good budget contender. We’re hoping to test it over the next few months.
The competition
The HP Spectre x360 had terrible CalMAN marks in our testing—all around the 4.0 mark and well beyond (ideally, we look for results below 3.0)—and it was the slowest laptop we tested when exporting 4K video. We enjoyed using its keyboard and trackpad for work, it had the second-longest battery life of the laptops we tested, and it’s a few hundred dollars less expensive than our budget pick for the same specs, but we can’t recommend it because of the test results we mentioned above.
The Asus ZenBook Pro 15 gave us good CalMAN results, but it displays only in Adobe RGB, which doesn’t help those who will use the sRGB color spectrum (most video and photo editors). It took about 30 seconds longer than both the Microsoft Surface Book 2 and Dell XPS 15 Touch to export 4K video, and its keyboard and trackpad felt less natural to use than the other contenders we tested. It also had shockingly poor battery life—3 hours, 44 minutes in our test—so we don’t think the ZenBook Pro 15 is the right choice for video and photo editing.
We considered mobile workstations like the Dell Precision 5520 and the Dell Precision 7520, but both models have slower, seventh-generation processors, and the Precision 7520 weighs more than 6 pounds. The Lenovo ThinkPad P52s is also a mobile workstation,and the Lenovo ThinkPad T580 is a business laptop, so we eliminated them from the competition.
Although it has a new, eighth-generation processor and powerful GPU, the HP Omen Laptop 15t is thicker, wider, and deeper than all the laptops we tested, at 14.2 inches by 10.4 inches by 1 inch. It also weighs nearly 6 pounds; the laptops we brought in for testing were all 4.5 pounds or less.
Footnotes
- We tested the HP Spectre x360 with Radeon RX Vega M GL graphics with 4 GB HMB2 VRAM and an eighth-generation i7-8705G processor. In our Adobe Premiere Pro tests, the HP took more than twice as long to export 4K video as the other laptops we tested with Nvidia graphics; it took 4 minutes, 42 seconds, while the Microsoft Surface Book 2 with Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 graphics exported 4K video in 2 minutes, 5 seconds.Jump back.
- In our 2018 tests we exported 4K video in Adobe Premiere Pro version 12.1. In our 2019 update, we tested Apple’s 15-inch MacBook Pro with Vega 20 Graphics with both the 12.1 version and the 12.1.2 version of Premiere Pro.Jump back.
Sources
- Brett Howse, The Microsoft Surface Book 2 (15-Inch) Review: Second Time’s The Charm, Anandtech, December 21, 2017
- Dan Ackerman, Microsoft Surface Book 2 (15-inch) review: A satisfying sequel, CNET, November 16, 2017
- Andreas Osthoff, Microsoft Surface Book 2 15 (i7, GTX 1060) Laptop Review, Notebook Check, February 18, 2018
- Henry T. Casey, Apple 15-inch MacBook Pro (2018) Review, Laptop Mag, November 24, 2018
- Dan Ackerman, Apple MacBook Pro with Touch Bar (15-inch, 2018) review: The tricked-out MacBook Pro recovers from an early software stumble, CNET, July 30, 2018
- Sherri L. Smith, Dell XPS 15 Review, Laptop Mag, November 24, 2018
- Joe Osborne, Dell XPS 156 (2018) review: Big power, little change, little change, TechRadar, November 16, 2018
Our editors independently research, test, and recommend the best products; you can learn more about our review process here. We may receive commissions on purchases made from our chosen links.
The Rundown
- Best Overall:XP-Pen Artist16 Pro 15.6 Drawing Tablet at Amazon, “With a host of creative features that make it an excellent all-around choice for most artists.”
- Best Android:Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 at Amazon, “Featuring the best stylus available on mass-market devices.”
- Best Drawing Pad:Huion H610 Pro Graphic Drawing Tablet at Amazon, “Narrow enough to perfectly fit on your desk with a keyboard, a space-saving plus for graphic designers.”
- Best Budget:Monoprice 10594 Graphic Drawing Tablet at Walmart, “Not a top-of-the-line number, but more than eye-catching for the price.”
- Best for Windows Users:Microsoft Surface Pro 12.3 at Best Buy, “A standalone device that lets you do basically everything a laptop would allow you to do.”
- Runner-Up, Best Overall:Huion KAMVAS GT-191 at Amazon, “Gives you a massive amount of sketching real estate for the price.”
- Best Small Screen:Lenovo Yoga Book at Amazon, “Guaranteeing high-performance hardware despite its trim size.”
- Best for Professionals:GAOMON PD1560 at Amazon, “Compatible with the latest Windows (7/8/10) and Mac OS systems, as well as most professional designing programs.”
- Runner-Up, Best Budget:Huion H420 USB Graphics Drawing Tablet Board Kit at Amazon, “With an active area of 4 x 2.23 inches and a resolution of 4,000 lines per inch.”
- Best Apple Tablet:Apple iPad Pro at Apple, 'The user-friendly touch controls and lag-free connection to the Apple Pencil make for a very natural drawing experience.'
- Best Paper-to-Digital:Wacom Intuos Pro Paper Edition at Amazon, “Allowing you to capture and upload pen-on-paper artwork into a completely digital form.”
Our Top Picks
Best Overall: XP-Pen Artist16 Pro 15.6 Drawing Tablet
4.1
The Artist16 is a drawing tablet by XP-Pen with an extra-wide viewing angle and a host of creative features that make it an excellent all-around choice for most artists. Featuring a 1080P FullHD IPS display, your creations will come to life in vivid color and definition. An extra-wide, 178-degree viewing angle gives you the canvas you need to realize your design. And with 2,078 levels of pressure sensitivity, this tablet will work for drawing, painting, editing, designing, sketching and animating without any trouble.
The Artist16 comes with two rechargeable pens, a black anti-fouling glove and an HDMI adapter. It has eight express keys to eliminate headaches, allowing you to focus on the creative element. The adjustable display stand will also give you the freedom and flexibility you need to get in the zone. Finally, the tablet is compatible with Sai, Photoshop and most mainstream design software.
Best Android: Samsung Galaxy Tab S3
4.4
Samsung equips their Galaxy tablets with the best stylus available on mass-market devices. The S Pen offers true-to-life pressure and sensitivity that rivals pens designed exclusively for drawing tablets. The pen never needs to be re-charged and can operate as a variety of drawing styles and devices.
In addition to a best-in-class pen, the Galaxy Tab S3 is an excellent all-around tablet. It has a vivid Super AMOLED display for deep contrast and extraordinary colors. It also comes with powerful Quad speakers tuned by AKG and a featherlight keyboard that can be attached to the tablet so that it operates like a laptop for word processing. It has a powerful 12-hour battery and a speedy Snapdragon quad-core processor.
Best Drawing Pad: Huion H610 Pro Graphic Drawing Tablet
4.1
Designed with office work in mind, this ultra-narrow tablet is wireless and fits perfectly on your desk with a keyboard, a space-saving plus for graphic designers. The tablet connects to your PC or Mac where it works on Illustrator, Maya and other graphic design software (you'll need Windows 7 to 10 or Mac 10.10 or above). It has a six-meter wireless connection distance and a 2500mAh battery that lasts up to 40 hours. The sleek design separates the touch and draw area, so you can work without worrying about your palm accidentally touching the screen. The device has six customizable buttons and 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity.
Best Budget: Monoprice 10594 Graphic Drawing Tablet
3.7
When it comes to functionality for your drawing tablet, it doesn't get much more nuts-and-bolts than this option from Monoprice. If you haven’t heard of the brand, then it’s worth taking a look, because tech heads swear by Monoprice for their cables, and in recent years we’ve been increasingly more impressed with the company’s ability to produce true quality products across the board. This drawing peripheral is no exception – it’s a serious workhorse for the visually inclined.
Let’s unpack the features: it offers a 10 x 6.25-inch drawing surface that sports a 4,000 LPI drawing resolution at a report rate of 200 RPS. There are 2,048 levels of pen pressure, rounding out all dimensions of accuracy for the drawing surface itself. These are certainly not top-of-the-line “premium” numbers, but are more than eye-catching for the price. There are 16 hot zones that can at the top of the drawing surface that can be assigned by you, plus further assignable expression keys that’ll let you do as much work as possible on the surface itself without the need to move to other accessories. It connects to the computer via USB and is compatible with basically any modern OS, and could even be modded to work on Linux.
Best for Windows Users: Microsoft Surface Pro 12.3
4.1
Like a couple of the other tablets on this list, the Surface isn’t strictly a drawing surface – it’s a standalone device that lets you do basically everything a laptop would allow you to do. But the lines are getting blurrier and blurrier when it comes to the difference between tablets and laptops and drawing peripherals. The Microsoft Surface Pro line is the tech giant’s strongest tablet effort to date, and while the original Surface generations didn’t take off, these newer ones are completely viable options, especially if you’re a working designer.
For starters, their ultra-high resolution PixelSense displays are almost as stunning as Apple’s Retina Displays, and the color representation is pretty solid, too. There’s an added color bonus of being able to spec out and add notes on the screen about print colors that are directly compatible (and readable) by the OS sending print jobs to a Windows Ink printer – a great feature for designers working in print. It’s powered by a full Intel Core i5 processor and 4GB of RAM, so if you do want to do more than just use it to draw, you’ll have tons of speed.
In terms of accessories, the accompanying pen and Microsoft’s Surface Dial are both great options for those who want to be more and more efficient and precise with their gestures, and the screen itself offers extra accurate tracking. The whole thing is super light and it runs on an impressive battery that Microsoft says is 50 percent and 68 percent better than the previous two generations, respectively.
Check out our other reviews of the best 2-in-one laptop tablets available on the market today.
Runner-Up, Best Overall: Huion KAMVAS GT-191
The 19.5-inch IPS, widescreen HD display offered by the Huion KAMVAS drawing tablet is the first thing you’ll notice when you pull it out of the box. And that’s for good reason — this thing gives you a massive amount of sketching real estate for the price. But the 72 percent NTSC color gamut gives you equally impressive levels of color representation, so you’ll almost forget that it’s just a peripheral.
As for the actual mechanics of sketching, there are over 8,000 separate levels of pen pressure, giving you extra z-axis precision when you’re trying to realize your art, and that physical flexibility is further extended with the ergonomically adjustable stand, allowing you to position the tablet at the perfect angle for whatever you’re working on.
The included PE330 stylus is rechargeable with two separate assignable gesture buttons, and this model is newly redesigned to be extra responsive when drawing on the display. It’s compatible with both Windows and Mac and further works with the Adobe Suite. This particular package comes with that aforementioned pen, plus a writing glove and additional pen tips to replace once they wear out.
Best Small Screen: Lenovo Yoga Book
For the artist on the go, the Lenovo Yoga Book fits snugly into any backpack or travel bag. Ten inches long, 0.4 inches thick, and weighing less than 2 pounds, Lenovo proudly claims that their product is the thinnest and lightest 2-in-1 tablet on the market. It's also a highly versatile machine with four modes that respond to your needs whether you want to draw, binge Netflix, or draft an email. You can adjust the Yoga Book's 360-degree hinge to place it in Create Mode, Browse Mode, Watch Mode, and Type Mode.
Despite its trim size, the Yoga Book also guarantees high-performance hardware, featuring a 64GB solid-state drive, 4GB LP DDR3 of RAM, and 13 hours of battery life. The 10.1-inch screen delivers picture-perfect visuals: 1920 x 1200 HD resolution and 400 nits of brightness. The tablet’s main bonus for artists is the battery-free Real Pen stylus and the attached Create Pad, which allows you to digitize written notes or sketches. The Real Pen stylus boasts 2048 levels of pressure sensitivity and accurately replicates the experience of writing in a real notebook.
Best for Professionals: GAOMON PD1560
Most artists will swear by Wacom as one of the most reputable brands in the industry, but GAOMON is just as respectable and the company's 15.6-inch PD1560 tablet boasts high-performance specs at half the price of a 13-inch Wacom tablet. Firstly, the screen features full 19020 x 1080 (16:9) HD resolution as well as bright, accurate colors. Secondly, the glass itself offers a smooth drawing experience and the pen features 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity for finessed and precise sketching. There’s also a useful “screen-flip” function to accommodate left-handed artists.
On the edges of the display, you’ll find the menu controls as well as 10 shortcut keys, ready to be customized according to your creative needs. Additionally, you’ll find an adjustable stand on the back of the tablet, offering maximum comfort while you work. Finally, the GAOMON model is compatible with the latest Windows (7/8/10) and Mac OS systems, as well as most professional designing programs, including but not limited to Photoshop, Illustrator, SketchBook Pro, SAI 2, and SketchBook Pro.
Runner-Up, Best Budget: Huion H420 USB Graphics Drawing Tablet Board Kit
Before you plunk down hundreds of dollars on a professional tablet, get a feel for drawing with this $30 kit. The tablet itself has an active area of 4 by 2.23 inches and a resolution of 4,000 lines per inch, while the pen offers 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity, giving you precise control over brush effects and line width. It also has three express keys that let you do things like close or save the current page.
It’s compatible with all major graphics applications (think Corel Painter, CorelDraw, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Fireworks and beyond) as well as most operating systems, including Windows 8, Windows 7, Vista, XP and Mac OS 10.4+. Unfortunately the handy pen scrolling feature, which lets you scroll documents and websites by pressing the middle button of the digital pen over the tablet's working area, is unavailable in Mac OS. Even so, it’s a fantastic value, complete with a wool carrying case, USB cable, anti-fouling glove and cleaning kit.
Best Apple Tablet: Apple iPad Pro
The latest iPad Pro model boasts lighter and slimmer dimensions, living up to Apple’s claim: “More screen. Less device.” The 11-inch model has the same dimensions as its predecessor, the 10.5-inch Pro, but the screen is larger. How did Apple accomplish this? The new iPad’s display spans the entire front of the device, eliminating the home button and downsizing both the camera and speakers. Additionally, the screen itself offers remarkable visual quality: up to 2732 x 2048 pixels, true-to-life color detail, 600 nit brightness, and the lowest level of reflectivity on the market.
For artists, this tablet wouldn’t be complete without the Apple Pencil. The user-friendly touch controls and lag-free connection make for a very natural drawing experience. With a simple double-tap, you can switch between the brush, pen, and highlighter tools, or change the brush’s size. The Pencil is also sensitive to pressure: press down to draw thicker lines or tilt to shade. You can even rest your palm against the tablet screen without leaving any unwanted marks, mimicking a true drawing experience as much as possible and eliminating wrist strain.
Best Paper-to-Digital: Wacom Intuos Pro Paper Edition
Some people will always prefer the feel and function of drawing on a piece of paper, but still want digital versions of their creations that they can upload and edit. If you're in this camp, then the Intuous Pro Paper Edition is perfect, as it allows you to capture and upload pen-on-paper artwork into a completely digital form in a raster or vector file. Just use the Intuos Pro tablet’s new Pro Pen 2 technology. It comes combined with a removable paper clip and .4mm fine-tip gel pen. Just place the paper over the tablet and sketch. Your work will be captured on the tablet, even if you aren’t connected to the Internet.
The Pro Pen 2 also delivers the most accurate performance, with 4x higher accuracy than earlier versions for lag-free tracking and tilt recognition. The tablet is very comfortable to hold, opting for a thin and lightweight edition that feels great in your hands and lap. Eight express keys can be programmed to your liking, while a touch ring controls canvas rotation and other features. It's compatible with Windows 7 or later (64bit) and Mac OS 10.10 or later.
Tested by
How We Tested
Our reviewers spent 14 hours testing the five most popular drawing tablets on the market. We asked our testers to consider the most important features when using these tablets and we've outlined them here so that you, too, know what to look for when shopping.
What to Look for in a Drawing Tablet
Type of tablet -While drawing tablets are more expensive, they’re a bit more intuitive because you draw with a stylus directly on the screen. Graphic tablets — which need to be hooked up to a computer — usually deliver a faster workflow because they’re backed by more processing power. They also don’t need to be charged and are usually more durable.
![Design Design](/uploads/1/2/6/1/126163762/387198673.jpg)
Pressure sensitivity - Pressure sensitivity determines how much you can vary the width of the lines you paint, based on the amount of pressure you apply to the stylus. The standard tablet offers 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity, which should be more than enough for most creatives.
Budget -Drawing tablets prices can start as low as $30 and creep up to nearly $1,000. The difference in price is largely related to the display. The better the resolution and pressure sensitivity, the more expensive the tablet. But of course, if it doesn’t have a display, you’ll likely get it for a lower price.
Test Results: XP-Pen Artist16 Pro 15.6 Drawing Tablet (Best Overall)
4.1
What We Like
- Large screen
- Comes with eight pen nibs
- Has eight customizable express keys
What We Don’t Like
- Has a lot of wires
- Not beginner friendly
If you’re looking for a balance between budget and precision, the XP-Pen Artist 15.6 Drawing Tablet is the option you need. According to our testers, the screen size is great, the display is clear, and the colors are very crisp. One of our testers, who also owns a Wacom Intuos 5 tablet and a Wacom Cintiq 22HD tablet (both of which are much more expensive), gave this model high marks. She described it as “surprisingly light” and loved how many extra accessories it came with. “There was a small half-glove for you to keep the surface of the tablet clean, two pens, and extra nibs,” she said. The extra nibs were particularly helpful, because she told us she tends to go through nibs quickly.
One reviewer did mention that “light strokes could be finicky” but said the tablet was “spot-on” if you applied harder pressure.
Test Results: Galaxy Tab S3 (Best Android)
4.4
![Best Non Mac Laptop For Graphic Design 2018 Best Non Mac Laptop For Graphic Design 2018](/uploads/1/2/6/1/126163762/902385195.jpg)
What We Like
- Lightweight
- Very durable
- Pen is very responsive
Our testers thought this tablet was a top-notch choice. One person said, “It has everything I need: internet access, a camera, and great drawing capabilities.” Plus, this tablet is not just for drawing. Grab it for a quick binge-watching session on the couch or use the included S Pen to sketch out your favorite designs. It’s a great option for artistic tablet users that want to get more than one function out of a pricey device.
The Galaxy Tab S3 is also easy to travel with, according to Lifewire reviewers.Just throw it in your bag to draw on the go. Our testers’ only gripe is that it takes a little over 2.5 hours to get a full charge.
Test Results: Huion H610 Pro Graphic Drawing Tablet (Best Drawing Pad)
4.1
What We Like
- Great pressure sensitivity
- Light
- Wireless connectivity for a cable-free experience
What We Don’t Like
- Length (14.7 inches) makes it a tight fit in smaller backpack
Our reviewers love the Huion H610 Pro Graphic Drawing Tablet’s wireless capability. You can move up to six meters away from your computer whenever you want. Since some of our testers complained about other drawing tablets’ many wires, being completely unencumbered is a big plus.
Lifewire reviewers did say that only experienced designers should spring for this model. It’s not the right choice if you’re a total drawing-tablet beginner. Once you do buy it though, you’ll be impressed. “The screen is very responsive,” one person said.
Test Results: Monoprice 10594 Graphic Drawing Tablet (Best Budget)
3.7
Best Desktop For Graphic Designers 2018
What We Like
- Shortcut keys to customize functionality
- Lightweight
- Stylus is wireless
What We Don’t Like
- Tablet has no wireless capability
- Comes with a CD to install the software
The Monoprice 10594 Graphic Drawing Tablet has everything you want in a very budget-friendly device.It has eight express keys and 16 hot zones that you can assign functionality to. “I would recommend this product if you are looking for a basic, no frills drawing tablet,” one reviewer said. How to add bcc line in outlook for mac 2018. Plus it’s light — weighing in at a little less than 3 ounces — which makes it easy to take on the road.
Test Results: Microsoft Surface Pro 12.3 (Best for Windows Users)
4.1
What We Don’t Like
- Large screen can affect portability
Top Graphic Design Software 2018
Designers are known for their preference for Apple products, but if you’re a creative type that sticks with Windows, the Microsoft Surface Pro should be your go-to drawing tablet. The 12-inch screen allows you to see exactly what you’re doing and our testers describe both the picture and color quality as “above average.” Though you can do more than draw on this device, you may not want to: Lifewire reviewers loved everything about this tablet’s drawing functionality. “The screen was very responsive,” one person said. “[The pen] is extremely accurate and very flexible with its pressure-sensing feature.” He went on to say that he actually prefers this pen over Apple’s because it’s easier to hold and shorter. “The pen is very sensitive and it almost provides the same experience as writing on actual paper,” he added.