Thanks again to Gearbest for sending over another tablet for review.
The Veikk A50 is the third product I've featured that's made by Veikk. The earlier two were the VK 1560 pen display and the small S640 signature tablet.
This is a 10 by 6 inch graphics tablet that comes with 8 shortcut buttons and a touchpad for additional shortcuts.
Direct product link:
https://www.gearbest.com/graphics-tablets/pp_009826316913.html?lkid=1682...
These are the items included: the tablet, battery-less pen, pen case, USB-C connection cable, welcome card and instruction manual.
The design looks good. It's thin. Corners are rounded off. The matte drawing surface is a single piece that extends to the button area. 10 by 6 inch drawing area is a good size to work with.
The 8 shortcut keys and touchpad are customisable. Buttons have firm feedback when clicked. The touchpad also works properly.
On the back there are 4 rubber feet to prevent the tablet from sliding around on the table. The back is designed with patterned dots which looks good too.
The connection for the cable is located at the top left. There's also an on-off switch for the touchpad just beside.
This is how it looks with the L-shape USB-C head.
If you're left handed, the port is at the bottom right of the tablet.
The pen comes with a slot-in type fabric case (or pouch). The fabric is thick so it provides good protection for the pen. It's good to use it since the cylindrical pen may roll around on the table.
The pen feels solid but rather lightweight. The hard plastic matte texture is nice to grip and easy to clean.
The pen does not use battery so it doesn't need to be charged. It supports up to 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity.
8 replacement nibs and a nib remover are included. The pen tip feels nice to draw on the surface. Has just the right amount of friction.
The box does not come with a driver disc so you have to download the driver from Veikk's website. There are Mac and Windows driver. The driver version I've used for this review is Version 1.0.0.0. And the OS I've tested on are Mac OS 10.12.6 and Windows 10 Pro.
This card has the email address of the support as well, and the claim to reply within 24 hours. I did contact them via the messaging bot on their website and they got back to me within an hour.
Driver
Before installing the driver, you should uninstall all previous tablet drivers, if any, on your computer.
After installing, the driver can be found on Mac's System Preferences or on Windows' desktop or System Tray as an icon. The driver features are exactly the same on Mac and Windows.
Pressure sensitivity can be changed by adjusting the pressure curves. The two side buttons are also customisable.
When you click on the drop down menu, these will appear:
- Click - different mouse click options
- Keyboard - Customise your own keyboard shortcuts
- Tablet - Get into Accurate Mode, Eraser Toggle, Monitor Switch, Dial Function Switch
- Navigation - Back, Forward, Zoom In, Zoom Out
- Application - Choose an application to run
- Invalid - No action
- Default - Reset to default
These are the mapping options. If you're left handed, you can change to left handed mode here. And if you want to move the pen like a mouse, there's the Mouse mode available.
Here's where you can customise all the 8 physical shortcut buttons. The drop down menu has the same options as previously mentioned.
Note also that you can create different sets of shortcuts. Let's say you use Photoshop and Illustrator a lot, you can create a set of shortcuts specifically for Photoshop, and one set for Illustrator.
The touchpad allows you to customise 4 directional shortcuts. I've customised swipe up and down to zoom in and out, swipe left and right to change brush sizes. It works really well in action. Each swipe will give you several increments. So if you just need a one-step increment, you just swipe in small movement.
Drawing performance
In short, it works really well on Mac with all the drawing apps that I've tested. But on Windows, I was only able to get pressure sensitivity working with Medibang Paint Pro and Clip Studio.
I've emailed Veikk support and they told me to delete "wintab32.dll", reinstall the tablet driver but that did not solve my Windows problem.
Drawing performance is fantastic with Photoshop CC 2019. Lines taper well, curves, transition from thin to thick are smooth. Lines come out just the way I want them to. Pressure sensitivity works great. There's no lag and lines always appear instantly below the pen tip.
This fantastic performance is similar with other drawing apps on the Mac.
Mediang Paint Pro (Mac) version 19.
Clip Studio (Mac)
Krita (Mac)
Clip Studio (Windows)
Medibang Paint Pro (Windows).
The Windows apps that I've tested that do not work with pressure sensitivity are Photoshop, Affinity Photo, Sketchable, ArtRage Touch, Wacom Bamboo Paper and Krita.
Conclusion
Overall fantastic performance on Mac OS. If you're using Mac, you can go ahead and purchase. The tablet gets 5 out of 5 stars rating from me. Button and touchpad shortcuts work well. Pen is nice to draw with. Overall build quality is solid and design looks good.
If you're using Windows, well, I can't recommend it based on my personal experience. I have reviewed many graphic tablets and this is the first time I'm experiencing so many Windows app that do not work with pressure. I just cannot figure out what's wrong.
If you have a Veikk A50, let me know if you have the same problems on Windows. Maybe it's just me.
Availability
You can check out more reviews of Veikk A50 on Gearbest at https://www.gearbest.com/graphics-tablets/pp_009826316913.html?lkid=1682...
It's priced around US $50 and includes free shipping from Gearbest. For a 10 by 6 inch tablet, that's a good price. Just for comparison, the 7.9 by 6.3 wired Wacom Intuos is selling at US $70 and the 10.4 x 7.8 wireless Wacom Intuos is US $170.
If you want to check out more drawing tablet reviews, visit https://www.parkablogs.com/tags/drawing-tablet-reviews
