I’m going to preface this by saying that I only got my XP-PEN Deco 01 v2 today, so, what I’m going to say is based on a total of around three hours of use so far. If my experience with the tablet or company changes in the coming months, I’ll update the review, so, here goes.
I use GIMP 2.10.22, and it’s been my experience over the past decade I’ve been using GIMP, that it’s usually either really fiddly to set up a tablet with GIMP (unless it’s a Wacom, of course), or a tablet straight up just isn’t compatible with the software. But with the Deco 01 v2, it was so incredibly easy. All I really had to do was was set the tablet up as normal, and then go into GIMP’s input device settings and enable the Eraser function, choose a Brush Dynamics profile, and that was it. I was off and scribbling in about five minutes, when all was said and done. So, I’m super happy with my purchase of their product.
This is technically my third tablet, but the first one I’ve been able to actually get to work with GIMP without any real hassle. First tablet was a Genius MousePen 608, and that KINDA worked with GIMP, but not really (it kept losing cursor position and I’d have to restart GIMP what seemed like every 10 minutes or so to get the cursor tracking back). The next one was a Turcom TS-6580B, and I couldn’t get that one to work with GIMP no matter what I did. It’s actually still sitting on the chair where I left it almost five years ago. Can’t find the pen, though, so it’s not really useful, anyway, and it was an active stylus and thus required 1xAAA battery. This drawing tablet is amazing so far.
But yeah, the construction seems solid enough, the lit corners for the working area are a nice touch, especially if you’re gonna be using it any at night, and having the little shortcut keys on the side is convenient. And I’m not gonna lie; the extras that are included with it certainly make it what I’d consider a decent value (other brands, you should be taking notes from these guys), and it comes at a decent price too, which, of course, is something to consider.
The only thing I could mildly complain about is that I wish the PN05 stylus that comes with the Deco 01 v2 had the eraser end, and that could potentially be alleviated by swapping it out for another stylus, but I don’t know if any other styluses from XP-PEN (or from anyone else, for that matter) are compatible with the tablet. So, maybe if anyone knows, one way or another, you could let me know in a comment to this review.
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