Artist Review: XPPen Magic Drawing Pad (2025 update)

Review unit provided by XPPen

XPPen has just updated the Magic Drawing Pad (review) which was released in early 2024. It's just a minor update so the product page is same as before. Price at the time of review is USD 425. XPPen actually does not differentiate the two models but for this review, I'll refer to them as MDP 2023 and MDP 2025.

Here are the upgrades or changes:

• Android 12 to Android 14
• X3 Pro Pencil with one side button to X3 Pro Slim Pen with two buttons
• Tilt sensitivity support added but...
• Cursor misalignment has a software fix

There are no other changes that I can see.

I no longer have the 2025 model so I can't do a side-by-side comparison, especially to compared the software and OS differences.

Specifications

The original XPPen Magic Drawing Pad was the first portable drawing tablet from XPPen and I consider that to be a great addition to the pen displays and pen tablets the company are already selling.

It's always good to have more options with portable Android tablets that have pen support and this one uses XPPen's own pen tech. The 2025 update uses the X3 Pro Slim Pen instead of the earlier X3 Pro Pencil. Pressure support is good. Tilt sensitivity is too sensitive and could be a deal breaker for those who use tilt brushes. Palm rejection does not work consistently but there's a workaround which I will talk about later.

The hardware is fine although I really wished there is some hardware upgrade. The display is vibrant, sharp and bright enough at 360 nits. The laminated matte glass has good anti-glare and outstanding sharpness similar to traditional matte LCD desktop monitors.

Audio quality from the 4 speakers is decent. The MT8771 is a midrange chip released in early 2022 and still provides decent performance for this tablet, and for drawing. There's 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage with microSD card slot.

At the USD 425 price point, this tablet now competes with the popular iPad 2025 with 6GB RAM and 128GB storage which can be found at USD 399 together with Apple Pencil 1. The advantage of the iPad is better pen performance overall, and the advantage of the XPPen is the larger matte glass laminated display.

One downside is you can't guarantee that XPPen would update Android OS in the future. MDP 2023 users are stuck using Android OS and it doesn't seem like XPPen has provided an update path for that earlier tablet which from what I can see uses the the same hardware.

Things included

• Tablet
• 33W USB-C charger
• USB-C to USB-C charging cable
• XPPen X3 Pro Slim Pen
• Pen button cover
• 4x plastic nib and 4x felt nibs
• Nib remover
• SIM ejection tool
• Artist glove
• User guide and warranty info
• Case

Design

Design of the tablet looks good with the rounded corners and LCD. The front edges have a noticeable angle bevel. Build quality feels solid.

I found out that this tablet looks identical to the TCL NXTPAPER 12 Pro, so it's possibly a rebrand, except XPPen has added support for its own X3 Pro pens.

The back has a 13MP camera with so-so picture quality.

The four speakers have decent audio quality despite sounding slightly hollow and lacking bass (expected). There's still some stereo and surround effect. Audio quality is definitely better than I expected since my expectation is quite low for audio from Android tablets. And you can control the media with the top-right swipe down.

There's an 8MP landscape camera which is said to support face unlock, but face unlock does not work so maybe a firmware is needed to make it work. Also the OS mentions face unlock will not work after 4-hour period of inactivity. Auto brightness does work well.

The USB-C port only has USB-2 transfer speed. Charging speed from what I've measured is 17W and a full charge would take around 2 hours. There's a microSD card slot for affordable storage expansion if needed.

Weight of the tablet is 599g which is alright for a 12.2-inch tablet. It's a bit heavier than what I would prefer to hold in one hand for drawing, so when drawing, the tablet is always on a tablet stand or on the table, or when I'm outdoors it could be on my lap while urban sketching.

The included case is not a flip case and does not protect the front. You'll need a proper tablet stand to prop up the tablet and I recommend the Parblo PR100 stand.

The case provides protection for the sides of the tablet with extra bumper protection for the corners. There's a cutout at one side of the case possible for keyboard connection but XPPen does not sell any keyboard accessory for this tablet. If you want a keyboard you may have to look for the one made for the TCL NXTPAPER 12 Pro.

Back of the case is quite susceptible to fingerprints but thankfully the frosted design don't show much fingerprints. There's a pen holder on the back. When the pen is in the holder, you can hold tablet vertically easily by using that part for more grip.

Display

The TFT LCD (IPS) display has colour support for 109% sRGB, 82% Adobe RGB, 77% NTSC and brightness is up to 360 nits. Refresh rate is 60Hz.

Colours look vibrant, visuals are sharp with 2160 x 1440 resolution. Pixelation is not really noticeable from one arm's distance away.

The 3:2 aspect ratio is good for drawing and productivity because it's very usable in both landscape and portrait orientation. In landscape orientation, you get more vertical height. In portrait orientation, you get a wide space to draw with. For watching videos, you'll see thicker black bars at the top and bottom.

The quality of the laminated matte glass display on this tablet is quite good. Anti-glare is effective. The surface is not susceptible to fingerprints and if there are any they are easy to wipe off.

All matte surface will introduce some grain, colour noise or anti-sparkle effect, and on this tablet all those are kept to a minimum. I actually found the display quality to be quite similar to traditional desktop LCD monitors.

The 360 nits brightness may not be high enough for outdoor use unless you're under the shade away from sunlight. When indoors, the brightness is high enough to see the content beneath the diffused reflections.

The display is laminated so there's no gap between the LCD and the surface. The cursor is always visible but can be disabled through settings.

Performance

The tablet comes with 8GB of RAM and processor is the midrange Mediatek MT8771. Overall performance is smooth enough, and more than powerful enough for drawing apps. I did not experience any stutter or lag with the usage of this tablet for drawing. You can game on this tablet but don't expect the best image quality or highest resolution.

Note there's only Widevine L3, so this tablet won't be stream high-resolution videos from Youtube, Netflix, and other video streaming websites.

Multi-tasking works fine although Google Chrome seems to quit a bit more often than usual compared to other apps. I switched to Brave browser and did not experience the same problem.

OS and software

The tablet runs on Android 14 and there's Google Play Store. Android OS used up 17GB, and that's down from 28GB. Storage capacity is quite generous at 256GB and there's a microSD card slot.

OS features are quite limited so if you need more features you'll have to install your own launcher, e.g. Nova Launcher.

PC/desktop mode from the previous model has been removed from what I can see. PC mode wasn't that useful anyway, especially on a small display.

The default files app is Google Files which does not have many features. I use Solid Explorer app.

XPPen has many beautiful wallpapers featuring their mascot Fenix.

App switcher has this tile mode.

There's a 3-month free subscription for IbisPaint X.

Here are some Advanced Features from the settings:

• Portrait centred: This will centre faces automatically during a video call
• Screen recording: Resolution is up to 1080P. You can choose system or external mic, choose to show touch interaction.
• Handwriting touch: Disables touch gestures and have the tablet accept only pen input.
• Handwriting offset: There's manual adjustment for cursor offset
• Stylus cursor: Hide or show the cursor
• Quick Sketch: You can press the pen down button and tap on the display two times to launch IbisPaint X. Unfortunately there's no way to change the app that's launched.
• Stylus: Pen side buttons can be customised to Back, Home screen, Recent, Shortcuts panel, undefined. And you can choose to show a floating ball with more the Shortcuts panel with more shortcuts to customise.

Pen shortcuts can be hidden and/or disabled.

One downside is there's no guarantee that XPPen will provide OS updates for their tablets. I read somewhere that MDP 2023 users cannot update Android 12 to 14, so I would expect the same for MDP 2025 which means this will be stuck with Android 14.

Generally speaking, it should not be an issue even if you're stuck with an older version of Android. But if a drawing app you use requires a newer version of Android, you may not be able to use that drawing app anymore. For example, Clip Studio Paint provides 4 years of OS support included the current Android OS. The current Android version is 16 at the time of review, which means Android 12 (used by MDP 2023) will be the last version supported and would not be able to install the next new version of CSP.

Pen

MDP 2025 uses the X3 Pro Slim Pen while MDP 2023 uses the X3 Pro Pencil. Main difference is the X3 Pro Slim Pen has two side buttons while the other only has one side button. There is no eraser.

The buttons can actually be removed and replaced with a button-less cover that's included.

Back of the pen can be twisted off and you can store 4 pen tips in the storage area.

The X3 Pro Slim Pen uses EMR technology so there's no internal battery and charging is not required. This is XPPen's own pen tech. Wacom EMR pens cannot be used with this tablet.

The pen supports 16,384 levels of pressure sensitivity. Tilt sensitivity and palm rejection do not work consistently. More on that further down.

The pen is lightweight with good build quality. The surface is matte textured and comfortable to hold with good grip. It is possible to use other XPPen X3 pens if you want a larger grip.

Line tests

Below are line tests created with Medibang Paint.

1. Thin lines can be drawn easily even with a thick brush selected as initial activation force is very low. There's minimal or no noticeable diagonal line wobble or jitter.

2. Lines are able to taper smoothly and sharply.

3. This is the true test for pressure sensitivity. Thin lines can be drawn easily after drawing thick lines. This pen is capable of detecting minimal changes in pressure when drawing with minimal pressure.

4. Consistent line width can be drawn easily by maintaining consistent pressure.

5. Dots can be drawn easily.

6. Cursor misalignment is not an issue. I was able to join separate lines without leaving gaps or overshooting.

The cursor will still stray from the pen tip when the pen is held at an angle. This is an issue with MDP 2023 too and XPPen released a firmware to let users adjust the cursor offset manually, and that worked well. You have that option here too.

Tilt sensitivity does not work consistently. With the X3 Pro Slim Pen, tilt would activate too easily when the pen is tilted slightly. To draw without tilt, you have to hold the pen vertically which of course is unnatural.

Tilt performance is the deal breaker if you use tilt brushes. This will affect all brushes that react with tilt. I would have to disable tilt in the settings to have some of the brushes react only with pressure.

By the way, the design of the front of the pen is not tapered enough for the pen to tilt low. When you tilt the pen low, the pen tip will lose contact and the plastic part of the front will touch the display instead.

Words on the left were written by the slim pen, and right written by the thicker pen

I have tested the X3 Pro Pen with the thicker silicone grip and I could tilt that pen lower before tilt activates, but even so tilt does not work consistently.

Latency will vary depend on the app used. Medibang Paint has very noticeable latency with a huge gap as the line chases the pen tip. Latency performance is better with Clip Studio Paint, Infinite Painter, Sketchbook Pro, and even better with Concepts. Latency is not an issue or something I think about when drawing.

The note taking performance of this tablet is quite good too.

Drawing experience

Overall drawing experience is good but there is more I have to elaborate.

The pen glides quite smoothly on the matte glass display. There's slight tactile experience is much smoother than paper. The texture is quite similar to pen displays with matte glass and pen tablets, definitely smoother compared to matte screen protectors.

Sketched with Concepts app

One nice thing about the matte glass is it sticks less to my sweaty palm, and any smudges from fingers or palm can be wiped off very easily.

Palm rejection is not perfect, and does not work as well compared to what you can find on iPads and Samsung tablets. While drawing, resting my palm on the display may occasionally activate the double-tap undo. When unintentional gestures activate, you may have to adjust the settings for a workaround. E.g. I would disable double-tap shortcut and use the buttons on screen instead.

I would say the tablet is still portable for use outdoors for sketching, but I would prefer to set it down on some surface so that my hands won't get tired easily. As long as you not under the sun, or near sunlight, the display brightness is high enough.

Battery life

Battery life is around 8-10 hours, usually longer with auto brightness.

Conclusion

The hardware of the XPPen Magic Drawing Pad 2025 is able to provide smooth performance. I did not notice any lag most of the time unless gaming with high visual quality. I typed this whole review on the tablet and was switching around with other apps and there were no issues with multi-tasking. This tablet is definitely powerful enough to handle drawing apps.

Pressure support is wonderful and the pen is very sensitive and quite accurate with minimal to no diagonal line wobble. Drawing experience is only affected by tilt and palm rejection that do not work consistently. If XPPen can improve tilt and palm rejection, that will improve drawing experience significantly.

Drawing on the laminated matte glass display feels great. There's subtle tactile feedback when drawing, and that's the reason why some people would rather use a matte screen protector over glossy displays when drawing. With the matte glass, you don't have to worry about the display scratching or wearing down, and the matte surface XPPen has used does not affect image quality much.

This is a capable tablet for drawing. The only deal breaker is with tilt sensitivity if you have to use tilt brushes.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Beautiful design and solid build quality
+ Large 12.2-inch display
+ Vibrant, sharp and bright display
+ Laminated display
+ Auto brightness works well
+ Matte drawing with good anti-glare and sharpness
+ Case included
+ Pen included
+ 16K levels of pressure sensitivity
+ Good pressure performance
+ Decent audio quality
+ Smooth overall performance
+ MicroSD card slot
+ Android 14
- Case does not protect front of the display
- Face unlock supported but does not work
- Don't expect OS updates
- Palm rejection not flawless
- Tilt sensitivity does not work consistently
- Matte surface may be too smooth for some
- OS takes up 28GB
- Gestures for 3 or more fingers not supported

Availability

You can find the XPPen Magic Drawing Pad 2025 from XPPen online store and Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | ES | IT | JP)

XPPen does not differentiate the 2023 and 2025 models with obvious labels so make sure to read the product specifications to check for Android 14.

If you have intention to buy this, consider using the affiliate link to make your purchase. I earn some commission at no extra cost to you. And your support helps me put out more reviews such as the one you just read.