Want to get serious about digital art? Want to upgrade from a non-screen tablet, a small pen display, or an old wacom cintiq model?
The 24-inch pen display monitor is a great tool for professionals and mid-level artists who want to take painting to the next level and draw directly on the big screen.
XP-Pen Artist 24 Pro is what many artists calls a budget alternative to the Wacom Cintiq Pro 24—a much more expensive and feature-rich tablet for the pro market.
Which one has better screen quality, best drawing experience & longer life span? and Which one is worth buying? Is Wacom Cintiq really better than XP-Pen Artist?
In this article, we would discuss the key differences between them and help you decide which one will fit your needs better.
Wacom Cintiq Pro 24 vs XPPen Artist 24 Pro Comparison– which one is worth buying?
Taking a closer look at the specifications of the two tablets, it gets easy to spot the key differences between them.
Below is a more in-depth analysis, These will help us better understand the pros and cons in each case.
Design and Build Quality
XP-Pen Artist 24 Pro is composed of a vast 23.8-inch glass screen, side buttons and an immense adjustable stand. Build quality is great and doesn't look and feel cheap.
The massive Wacom Cintiq Pro 24 feels robustly built and features a clean “minimalist” design aesthetic. You will notice that there is a lot of empty space around the 23.6-inch screen (bezels).
This leads to the tablet taking a lot more space on your table. But it's also incredibly comfortable to lay your arm on, and you can travel the full surface of the display without interrupting your pen stroke.
Cintiq Pro 24 has no ExpressKeys built into the sides like the Artist 24 Pro does. It also doesn't include an adjustable stand instead 2 folding legs at the back that will raise it up to a 20 degree angle.
Both tablets are big and heavy, less portable. If you're going to invest into a graphics tablet this size, make sure you have sufficient desk space to accommodate it.
Screen Resolution, Brightness and Color Gamut
Artist 24 Pro features an IPS display with 2K (2,560 x 1,440-pixel) resolution at 123 PPI, 250 nits max brightness, 16.7M colors and 90% Adobe RGB color gamut.
The screen looks nice and sharp, Colors are bright and vibrant. you can zoom around and work on the small details of your art.
However, the Cintiq pro 24's display offers higher 4K (3840×2160-pixel) resolution at 188 PPI, a billion colors, 350 nits max brightness, and covers a wider color accuracy of 99% Adobe RGB.
This means sharper and truer color representations illustrations, photographs, and video on Cintiq Pro 24.
In addition, Wacom Cintiq Pro 24 comes with a screen calibrated in the factory, meaning that you don't have to mess around with calibration hardware.
You will likely need to perform some calibration with the XPPen Artist 24 Pro, the same as you would for a monitor.
Screen Lamination
Cintiq Pro 24's screen is fully laminated, This means an improved display quality, reduced glare, wider viewer angle, more accuracy (no cursor offset/parallax from the pen tip), and better overall usability or user experience.
In contrast, Artist 24 Pro does not come with a laminated screen, But parallax is improved with newer screen technology, which is very minimal. After calibration, you can get the pen cursor to appear directly beneath the pen tip.
Surface Texture
Surface texture makes a huge difference in your drawing experience.
This is one of the main differences between the two tablets.
Cintiq Pro 24 has a matte etched glass surface, whereas the Artist 24 Pro uses a matte screen protector.
The etched glass will have a bit more paper-like texture, and even less slippery. Matte screen protectors are less durable, and have a much slicker feel.
Multi-Touch
It is worth noting that the XPPen Artist 24 Pro is not a touch screen.
There are two models of the Cintiq Pro 24, with and without multi-touch. The touch version costs $500 more than its sibling.
The most useful gestures were two-finger actions: pinch to zoom in / out and rotating the canvas. These two commands worked almost flawlessly.
But any action that required more than two or three fingers became quite cumbersome. of course you can always disable them by press the button.
Wacom Pro Pen 2 vs XPPen PA2 Stylus
Wacom Pro Pen 2 and the XPPen PA2 stylus look very similar to each other. They both have a rubber grip at the front body for a better hold.
Wacom pen has two buttons on the side and an eraser at the back whereas XPPen stylus has two side buttons with no eraser at the back.
XPPen Pa2 stylus is light and more front heavy. Wacom pen is more back heavy and more heavily weighted in general.
Both styluses are battery-free, doesn't require charging, supports 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity and 60 degrees of tilt recognition.
This means that it's easy to draw a line that smoothly varies between thick and thin as pressure is applied—or not—much like a brush.
The main difference was that XPPen PA2 stylus seems to take slightly more initial activation force than Wacom to draw, Tilt sensitivity is also sometimes a bit flaky.
In contrast, Wacom Pro Pen 2 feels more natural and accurate, it responds more predictably to the pressure you apply to it.
Overall the XPPen PA2 is a good stylus, but the Wacom Pen offers better drawing experience.
Shortcut Buttons
The Artist 24 Pro has two sets of keys, a red roller wheel and ten buttons on each side, making life equally convenient for lefties, righties, and the ambidextrous.
They mirror each other, so there are a total of 20 programmable keys and 2 dials. These are all on the outside, slightly raised.
The Cintiq Pro 24 has no Express Keys, But it comes with a wireless Express Key Remote via 2.4GHz Wifi.
This hand-held device provides 17 programmable shortcut function keys while working. There's a rotation wheel at the top that allows zooming in and out (or other customizable functions).
The remote is perfectly balanced for either right or left-handed people. It will magnetically stick to either side of the display keeping it handy at all times.
Compatibility and Connectivity
Both Cintiq Pro 24 and Artist 24 Pro are compatible with the popular operating systems Windows, Mac and Linux. They works well with a multitude of software packages that range from popular professional suites such as Photoshop and ZBrush, to freeware such as Krita and Blender.
The Cintiq Pro 24 and Artist 24 Pro can be connected as a display through HDMI, or USB-C, if your computer supports the ports.
If you are connecting the display through HDMI, you'll also need to connect one cable for power, and an additional USB-A cable for the pen data transmission, total 3.
The USB-C connection only requires 2 cables: a single USB-C cable + one cable for power.
Drivers & Software
Both units come with windows, mac and linux drivers to communicate with your computer. You need to download them from their official site.
The driver from Wacom is one of the most reliable options on the market. It comes with some advanced shortcut controls that are easy to understand and quick to setup.
The driver from XPPen may not be as advanced as the Wacom driver and may count more issues in some cases. but nothing you couldn't work around or just ignore.
XPPen driver has plenty of customization options. You can use it to customize physical shortcut buttons, calibrate the onslaught of the pen and screen, set the work area and export / import your settings.
Something we did notice is that both Wacom and XPPen driver software have 3-point calibration for the stylus' pressure sensitivity, which is great to get your pressure just right.
Tablet Stand & VESA Mount
The size of these 2 tablets are massive, so be prepared to make a bit of desk space available.
If you don't have much desk space, you might need to buy a VESA mount or arm to hold up the monitor in a comfortable position to draw on.
Artist 24 Pro's adjustable stand is strong, wobble-free, and already attached. Both the stand and bottom of the display have rubber feet to help prevent slipping on a desktop—a thoughtful touch.
The stand uses a standard 100 x 100 mm VESA mount, so it can be easily removed for attaching the display to a VESA arm mount if desired.
Even though Cintiq 24 Pro does come with the 2 legs to help prop it up, it’s still not enough. Having to hunch over when you draw/animate does numbers on your back.
Luckily, An optional $500 Wacom Ergo stand or $400 Wacom Flex Arm is available - It has an unique 80x495mm hole pattern at the back.
Wacom Ergo stand has raise, tilt and rotate mechanisms for adjustable positioning, so you can change angles easily while working on complex illustrations.
The Flex Arm allows the Cintiq Pro 24 to be positioned just about anywhere you want at any angle you want.
Wacom Pen Stand vs XP-Pen Pen Holder
Cintiq Pro 24, comes with a pen stand, which is shaped like a donut. It allows you to keep your stylus in a horizontal or vertical position when not in use.
Opening the top cover you get a total of 10 extra pen tips: 6 standard and 4 felt. There's also an extra pen holder that snaps to the top of the display.
With Artist 24 Pro, you get a cylindrical pen holder, which works as a pen storage.
The front cap of the pen holder works as a pen stand, while the rear cap of the pen holder provides safe storage space for 8 extra standard Pen nibs.
There's also a small plastic pen slot that screws into the side of the tablet to hold the stylus safely.
Cooling
There is an intermittent fan regulates the temperature of the Cintiq 24 Pro. The fan speed varies depending on the demands placed upon the monitor. Fan is quite loud at times.
XPPen Artist 24 Pro has no fans, so it is quiet with zero fan noise, which will certainly help users stay concentrated without the droning.
Price
The Artist 24 Pro retails for about $899 USD and Wacom's Cintiq Pro 24 sells for $1,999! That's quite the price jump to account for.
So let's just get this right out in the open. There are a lot of people who are looking for cintiq alternatives as Wacom's tablets are expensive.
Besides,The Huion Kamvas Pro 24 (4K) with cheaper price is also really excellent and almost as good as wacom cintiq Pro 24.
Related Posts: XPPen Artist 22R Pro vs Wacom Cintiq 22 Comparison, Wacom Cintiq Alternatives, PDF Annotating Tablets.
Conclusion
While it may be bigger than you'd need, The 24-inch pen display is generous enough to feel the freedom of drawing and move your hand with the pen around the screen without any problem.
The Wacom Cintiq Pro 24 simply outdoes the XP-Pen Artist 24 Pro in all aspects because it offers extra features like multi-touch, higher pixel density, longer warranty - 2 vs 1 year, etc.
Only downside is that it's expensive. If you're a serious artist, designer or 3D modeller, and money is no object, you'll struggle to do better than the Wacom Cintiq Pro 24.
The XP-Pen Artist 24 Pro offers amazing value for the money, with everything you'd need to take the next big step in their creative journey. And the price is more than acceptable for most artists.
Ultimately, It really depends on your budget, preference, needs and skill levels. We noticed that for many beginner artists using the Cintiq Pro 24 is unnecessary. Some of them don't even use the advaned features.
We look forward to seeing how Wacom, and XP-Pen will continue to grow their product line with graphic displays that can attract larger demographics.
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