Review: XPPen Artist 12 3rd with X4 Smart Chip Stylus

Review unit provided by XPPen

The XPPen Artist 12 3rd pen display was released in Oct 2025, almost four years after the XPPen Artist 12 (gen 2). For this review, I'll refer to the pen display as Artist 12 (gen 3) instead of Artist 12 3rd which is what it's being marketed as.

Main updates are

• New design with 8 hotkeys and 2 dials
• Increased (advertised) brightness from 220 to 260 nits
• Improved initial activation force (IAF) from 3g to 2g
• Pen pressure levels increased from 8K to 16K
• Use of matte glass instead of matte screen protector

The retail price is USD 239 and the pre-launch price is USD 215.

In case you don't already know, a pen display is a monitor so it has to connect to a computer to work. There's no internal battery, no OS and this unit does not have a touchscreen. A pen display lets you use desktop drawing apps available on Windows OS and MacOS.

Specifications

Things included

• Pen display
• X4 Smart Chip Stylus
• Folding tablet stand
• USB-C to USB-C video cable
• 3-to-1 cable with HDMI
• Artist glove
• Pen nib remover
• Extra pen nibs
• Micro fiber cleaning cloth
• Warranty booklet
• Quick start guide

This pen dislay supports either USB-C video or HDMI.

It may be possible to power this pen display with a single USB-C video connection. My laptop unfortunately is not able to provide enough power through its USB-C video port so I had to attach the pen display to additional power. I find this very strange because an 11.9-inch pen display does not use that much power and it should be possible for my laptop to power this to maximum brightness.

For HDMI connection, the HDMI, L-shape USB-C and black USB-A connectors will go to the computer, and red USB-A will go to a power source.

If the pen display does not have enough power, the display will either not power up, or it may power up the brightness will be low and the brightness controls from the OSD or driver will be locked.

Design

The XPPen Artist 12 (gen 3) is pen display with an 11.9-inch LCD. The active drawing area is about the same height as horizontal A5 paper but much wider.

This new design looks very different from the XPPen Artist gen 2 series pen displays. There are still eight hotkeys but now two dials called X-Dial are added.

The two dials have stops/clicks when rotating.

The dials can be turned with the tablet flat on the table, but are easier to turn with the tablet at an incline with part of your hand underneath. Hotkeys have firm clicks.

There are two USB-C ports by the right side of the pen display. The top USB-C port is for the USB-C video cable, and the bottom USB-C is for the 3-to-1 cable. The two ports are not interchangeable.

Those two USB-C ports are recessed and the cables have connectors that fit the holes perfectly. This means if the cables become faulty, you'll have to get a replacement cable from XPPen. I won't worry too much about faulty cables because the cable connection looks secure thanks to the recessed port design.

Almost the whole pen display is made with plastic and build quality is alright. The pen display feels hollow, but I'm not sure if it's more hollow compared to the previous model. I actually prefer the design of the previous model but hey you get two extra dials here.

The four rubber feet on the back has good grip on the table.

The pen can snap magnetically to the top of the pen display which is quite convenient.

You can hold down the + and - brightness buttons together to access the OSD, and use the same buttons to navigate, and the power button to confirm or exit. With the OSD, you can select different display modes (sRGB, AdobeRGB, P3), set the colour temperature and adjust the RGB sliders.

Display

Resolution of the display is 1920 x 1080, aspect ratio is 16:9 and refresh rate is 60Hz. For a display of this size with 1080P resolution, visuals still look sharp enough.

My usual recommendation for pen displays is to get 13-inches or larger. Larger pen displays will provide more drawing space after accounting for UI elements on screen. When the display is small, the space taken up by UI elements is proportionally more, and drawing space is much smaller.

Another thing to know is because the display is small, when you use the native resolution without UI scaling, the UI elements (text, icons) may look too small. And when you scale up the UI elements, you also reduce the drawing space.

If you use drawing apps with many UI elements, such as Clip Studio, Photoshop, Krita, you'll find yourself constantly hiding and unhiding the UI elements. If you use those apps, you'll usually want to have the UI elements visible so that you can be more productive.

12-inch is actually considered big for Android tablets because drawing apps on Android are mostly designed with minimal UI, but when you use desktop drawing apps, it's usually better to get larger displays. But of course if you're considering a 12-inch display, it also probably means you have limited budget, so there's always a compromise somewhere.

Colours for the display look good out of the box. After colour calibration, I measured colour support for 100% sRGB, 93% NTSC, 96% AdobeRGB and 96% P3. The measuredmaximum brightness of 183 nits is lower than the advertised 260 nits brightness but at least higher than the 151 nits from the previous model. 183 nits is sufficient for use indoors and does not look dim.

The display is laminated so there's almost no gap between the line and the pen tip. The line appears almost directly beneath the pen tip.

PEN

Design of the X4 Smart Chip Stylus is almost cylindrical except for the back which is slightly flatter. The pen supports tilt and 16K levels of pressure sensitivity. Initial activation force is 2g. The pen does not have a battery so no charging is required.

The pen has two customisable side buttons. There's no eraser at the back.

Driver

At the time of review, there are Mac and Windows drivers available. You can find the user manual and its PDF version online.

The driver allows for customisation of the pen buttons, hotkeys, dials, cursor tracking, brightness, contrast and RGB. It is also possible to create shortcuts that launch automatically for specific apps.

One key feature "Switch monitor" for switching the cursor between dual display setup works fine.

One new feature that this driver has is the "Floating Menu". This is a virtual menu that provides eight more customisable shortcuts. You can choose to display the menu vertically or horizontally, permanently pinned or hide automatically. This is great if you need to customise even more shortcuts.

Line tests

Line tests below were created with Medibang Paint.

1. Initial Activation Force (IAF) is minimal and the pen is very sensitive. You can draw thin lines very easily by applying minimal pressure. The pen can draw on its weight alone. I no longer have the Artist 12 Gen 2 to compare so I can't say how much improvement there is. The point here is this pen has excellent pressure performance.

Slow diagonal lines look quite straight to me. This is an improvement over the previous model.

2. Lines are able to taper smoothly and sharply.

3. Line transition from thin to thick is smooth. Lines are also able to go back to its thinnest from thick.

4. Lines with consistent width can be drawn easily by maintaining consistent pressure.

5. Dots can be drawn without issues.

6. There are no issues with cursor misalignment. Cursor is always directly beneath the pen tip. And if there is cursor misalignment, you should use the driver to correct that.

I have also tested cursor misalignment by holding the pen at different tilt angles and the cursor does not seem to stray from the pen tip. So the cursor seems to be always beneath the contact point of the pen tip.

Tilt works fine with Krita. Cursor is able to follow the direction of the pen.

Tilt did not work with Concepts which happens to be my main drawing app. I'm not sure what's happening here. Anyway, I am unable to test the pen performance with all drawing apps as there are too many.

Drawing experience

The pen performance is good so the drawing experience is good.

The texture of the matte glass is considered smooth and is definitely smoother compared to matte screen protectors. Smoother surfaces usually do not affect the visual quality of the display as much and that's the case here. There's minimal grain, colour noise or anti-glare sparkle with this matte surface.

The tactile experience while drawing is not like drawing on paper. The pen tip glides quite smoothly on the matte glass, but I won't say it's slippery. I am still able to get a good amount of control over the pen.

The main thing that affects drawing experience is the size of the display. To get more drawing space, you may have to hide the UI. And when you hide the UI, you have to unhide the UI again to access the tools you need. This is less of a problem and drawing on a larger display.

This was drawn with Medibang Paint. The lines were able to come out exactly the way I expect them to.

I did not encounter any issues with the lines, pen performance or driver while drawing.

Conclusion

The XPPen Artist 12 (gen 3) is a compact pen display with good colours and excellent drawing performance. The hotkeys and dials can be useful.

Main limitation is the small 11.9-inch LCD for all the various reasons mentioned above. The small size is also what makes it possible for Xppen to sell this at a much lower price.

It's a good pen display. I can't wait for Xppen to use this X4 pen tech with other products that they will release in the future.

Pros and cons at a glance

+ Beautiful design
+ Two dials added
+ USB-C video support
+ Pen does not require battery
+ Pen supports 16K levels of pressure sensitivity
+ There's tilt sensitivity
+ Pen has very low initial activation force
+ Cursor tracking is excellent right up to the extreme edges
+ 10 replacement tips included
+ Artist glove included
+ 8 hotkeys and two dials
+ Matte glass surface unlikely to scratch
+ 1920 x 1080 resolution adequate for a 11.9-inch display
+ 100% sRGB, 96% AdobeRGB measured
+ Viewing angles are good
+ Laminated display with no parallax
+ Does not produce much heat. Can be used for long periods of time without discomfort
+ Fantastic drawing performance on Mac and Windows
+ Support for Linux, Android and Chrome OS too
+ Competitive pricing
+ 18 months of warranty
+ Can be used as screen-less drawing tablet
- More plasticky build than previous model
- USB-C video connection may not achieve maximum brightness

Availability

The Xppen Artist 12 (gen 3) is available from their online store and Amazon US.