Review: XPPen Artist Ultra 16 OLED 4K touchscreen pen display

Review unit provided by XPPen

The XPPen Artist Utlra 16 is a high-end 15.6-inch 4K OLED touchscreen pen display designed for digital artists. This was released in September 2025 with a retail price is USD 899, and at the time of review it's USD 809.

Bottom line

The XPPen Artist Ultra 16 is a pen display that looks good and works well. This pen display is much better than the similarly priced XPPen Artist Pro 16TP released in 2021.

The OLED display is bright, vibrant and sharp, refresh rate is still 60Hz though. My Spyder X2 colour calibrator could not work with OLED but generally speaking, OLED displays usually have fantastic colour accuracy and contrast. The matte glass surface provides subtle feedback for drawing.

The pen is accurate and sensitive.

Touchscreen support is a mixed bag. Touchscreen works better on Windows, and many drawing apps on Windows have palm rejection, but not so for drawing apps on Mac. Unintentional gesture shortcuts still happen too often in my opinion, so using the included artist glove significantly improves touchscreen user experience.

This is a good product, and this is a good option for those who want more than what the XPPen Artist Pro 16 (gen 2) can provide. What you're paying extra for is the OLED and touchscreen.

Video review

The video review below is 1hr 10 minute long. You can watch the bottom line section if you don't have time to watch the whole thing.

Specifications

Things included

• Pen display
• Kick stand
• Pen stand
• X3 Pro stylus
• X3 Pro slim stylus
• 4x replacement felt nibs
• Replacement pen nibs for both pens
• 33W power adapter with interchangeable plugs
• ACK05 shortcut remote
• Stickers for ACK05
• USB-A wireless receiver for ACK05
• USB-A to USB-C charging cable for ACK05
• 2x USB-C to USB-C video cable (1.5m)
• 2-to-1 cable with HDMI, USB-A (1.5m)
• Artist glove
• Micro-fiber cleaning cloth
• Warranty booklet
• Quickstart guide

Design

The clean and simple design looks good. Corners are rounded off. Bezels are wide enough for palms to rest by the side. Build quality seems good.

The pen display is quite thin, thinner than most laptops. Weight is 1.53kg. This can be stored away easily onto a shelf.

Connection: This pen display can be powered to maximum brightness with a single USB-C video cable connection if your computer can provide enough power. If the display flickers or blacks out, it's could be a sign there's not enough power. E.g. One of my laptops would cause the pen display to black out when the pen hovers near due to lack of power. If your computer does not support USB-C video, you'll have to use the 2-to-1 cable that has HDMI.

The metal back has rubber feet provide good grip on the table. The matte textured back is quite susceptible to fingerprints.

The kickstand is not built into the body itself for some reason. The kickstand has to be attached to the back of the pen display with double-side tape.

The kickstand can deploy the pen display at two angles: low and lower.

I prefer using the pen display on the Parblo PR100 tablet stand which provides more angles of deployment.

Display

This is the first pen display from XPPen with an OLED display. The resolution is 4k UHD, aspect ratio is 16:9, refresh rate is 60Hz, and there's a 1ms response time.

4K UHD resolution with a 16-inch display should not have any UI scaling issues for MacOS. But if you find the UI too small, or MacOS does not have the UI scaling option you need, you can use the BetterDisplay app to adjust the UI scaling.

The display comes with a matte glass surface that's unlikely to scratch with the pen tip. Display is bright enough and what's on the screen can still be seen through diffused reflections.

OLED displays have pulse wave modulation which can affect people with sensitive eyes. If you are not sure whether you are affected by PWM, I recommend going to an electronics store to look at OLED displays, eg OLED TVs or laptops, to experience it yourself.

OLED displays used as pen displays is still quite new so the risk of burn-in is unknown at the moment. The Wacom Movink 13.3 was released in mid 2024 and the Xencelabs Pen Display 16 OLED was released in May 2024. There isn't much data available yet to let us know how durable OLED displays will be.

My Spyder X2 colour calibrator does not work with OLED displays so I can't measure the colour accuracy. Anyway, OLED displays typically have great colour accuracy. According to XPPen, this pen display supports 99% Adobe RGB, 99% sRGB, 98% Display P3 and a maximum brightness of 350 nits.

The anti-glare works well. Content on the display can still be seen through the diffused reflection. This display is also much brighter than the XPPen Artist Pro 16 (gen 2) which only has 171 nits brightness (measured). The extra brightness is extremely appreciated since pen displays with high brightness are few.

All matte textured surfaces will introduce some colour noise, grain or anti-glare sparkle. Slight colour noise is visible when working from normal distance away, but I don't find that to be too distracting. On a scale of 1 to 5 where 0 is a glossy display and 5 is a lousy matte screen protector, the colour noise on this pen display is probably a 3. Sharpness is good and not affected by the matte surface. Pixelation is not noticeable.

The display is laminated so there's almost no gap between the pen tip and cursor. The glass has some thickness but it's not too thick, and parallax is not really an issue on a 16-inch display.

Touchscreen

Having a touchscreen is a bonus, but in my opinion not a must have, at least for me as someone who always have the other hand on a keyboard.

The touchscreen works well with most drawing apps on Windows since Windows has support for touchscreen tablets and laptops for more than a decade.

Touchscreen also works with most drawing apps on Mac but not as well. Many drawing apps on Windows actually have support for touchscreen features, e.g. pan, zoom and rotate, but that's not the case with MacOS. Below are my findings for how touch behaves with drawing apps on MacOS:

• Clip Studio Paint (v2): Pan does not work
• Sketchbook: Pan, zoom, rotate does not work consistently
• Photoshop: Pan, zoom, rotate works
• Affinity Photo: Pan and rotate works. Zoom does not work
• Medibang Paint: Pan, zoom, rotate works
• Krita: Pan does not work

Three other Mac-only issues are:

1. The rotation or zoom pivot points are usually in the middle of the display and not between the fingers. Krita's rotate/zoom pivot is usually between the fingers.
2. When panning with two fingers to move the canvas, the canvas usually moves away from the fingers rather than remain underneath the finger like it does on iPads and Android tablets.
3. Palm rejection usually does not work properly unless the pen is near the display.
4. Scrolling webpages on a Mac requires a two finger screen. Using the pen would select text. Scrolling webpages on Windows can be done with one finger or the pen.

Pan, zoom, rotate and palm rejection works more predictably and consistently with drawing apps on Windows.

So when drawing on Mac, you'll have to remember which touch shortcuts work, and those that don't.

Driver

I've tested Mac driver v4.0.12_250926, Windows driver v4.0.11.250917.

For some reason, the Windows driver installed on my Huawei laptop would cause the pen display to black out when pen is near, but the same driver does not have this problem when installed on my Chuwi laptop. Of course if the pen display is constantly blacking out when the pen is near, then it's an immediate deal breaker. I cannot seem to isolate what's actually causing the black out.

This is the home screen of the driver.

Look at the top left area and you can see a target icon which is actually the Calibration button to correct cursor misalignment, and the hand icon is for configuring finger gesture shortcuts.

Up to eight shortcuts can be configured for Floating Menu, and you can input your own keyboard shortcuts.

It is possible to set mouse controls to shortcuts for the Floating Menu, pen buttons and XPPen ACK05 shortcut remote.

You can also choose from pre-programmed shortcuts provided by XPPen.

Precision mode makes the cursor move more slowly. Switch touch state lets you enable/disable touch, or set touch to work in a specific area (as configured in the driver)

These are the basic gestures supported, e.g. pan, zoom, rotate. Note that for MacOS, pan/scroll for webpages requires two fingers.

The driver provides advance gesture shortcuts for 3, 4 and 5-finger gestures. For 3 fingers, there's tap, swipe up, swipe down. For 4 fingers, there's swipe left or right. For 5 fingers, there's tap or swipe down. These shortcuts may interfere with gesture shortcuts from the OS or from the drawing apps. If there are conflicts with the gesture shortcuts, you'll have to disable the gesture shortcuts from the OS or from the drawing apps you use.

The default setting for 3-finger tap would call up the Floating Menu, which can be configured to be horizontal (above) or vertical. You can pin the Floating Menu permanently, or configure the shortcuts with the settings button.

Touch area should be left as default so that the whole display can be used as a touchscreen.

Mapping area should be left as default. If the pen is only working specific areas of the display, or the cursor is moving away too much from the pen tip, you may have to configure the mapping area.

The pen display does not have an OSD menu, so to adjust colour settings manually you'll have to do that with the driver. Settings you can adjust include changing the brightness, contrast, colour space (sRGB, AdobeRGB, P3, user), colour temperature and RGB sliders.

Pressure curve can be adjusted using three control points, or pre-programmed pressure curves. Pressure, tilt and mouse mode can be enabled or disabled.

The XPPen ACK05 shortcut remote uses the same driver. From the dropdown menu, you choose either Artist Ultra 16 or Shortcut Remote. The shortcut remote obviously has to be connected first before it will appear, and you have to use the USB-A wireless receiver for wireless connection.

A total of 36 shortcuts can be set to the hotkeys. That's 9 shortcuts per page/group with 1 for switching between different page/group.

It is possible to create groups of shortcuts for specific apps. So different groups of shortcuts will load depending on which app is active.

All the programmed shortcuts can be backed up into a configuration file.

Pens

The two pens included with the pen display are the XPPen X3 Pro Stylus PD21 and X3 Pro Slim Stylus PD51. There are only a few felt nibs included and I do recommend getting the felt nibs as they provide slightly more texture when drawing.

Both pens support tilt, 16K levels of pressure sensitivity and palm rejection. The pens are not powered by battery so no charging is required.

The thicker pen has a big comfortable silicone grip and comes with two side buttons and an eraser.

The thinner pen has two side buttons and no eraser.

The side buttons can actually be replaced with a cover that's provided. If you use the pen display with an Android device, the side buttons may not be necessary, but those buttons are definitely necessary for use with Windows and Mac.

Line tests

Line tests below were created with Medibang Paint (Mac)

1. Initial activation force is very low. Thin lines can be drawn easily even with a thick brush. There's slight wobble with slow diagonal lines but not really noticeable unless you're looking for it. Diagonal line wobble isn't really an issue when drawing.

With Medibang Paint (Mac), drawing a long line can cause a stutter to create a straight line, as circled in black in the picture above. This problem does not happen with other drawing apps.

2. Lines are able to taper smoothly and sharply.

3. Line transition from thin to thick, and back to thin is smooth. The pen is able to draw thin lines after thick lines suggesting the pen has good control over the pressure curve regardless of whether it's heavy or light pressure. This is also a diagonal line and there's no noticeable diagonal line wobble and jitter.

4. Line width can be maintain consistently while maintaining consistent pressure.

5. No issues with drawing dots.

6. This is the cursor misalignment test where lines are drawn separately, then joined to check for gaps and overshooting lines. There are no gaps and overshooting lines, which means cursor misalignment is not as issue.

Cursor does not stray away from the pen tip when the pen is held vertical then switched to an angle.

Tilt works well, at least with Krita. Cursor can follow the direction of the pen. Tilt did not work with Concepts app on Windows unfortunately, which is actually one of my main drawing apps.

The pen is quite accurate and sensitive. Performance is consistent and predictable.

Drawing experience

Pen performance is fantastic and I don't have negative things to say about that. But drawing experience can be negatively affected by touch gestures and palm rejection.

Unintentional finger gesture shortcuts are happening too often for me. While drawing, 3, 4, 5-finger shortcuts would sometimes activate unintentionally, but strangely it seldom happens for the 2-finger undo shortcut.

Palm rejection is not as accurate or consistent compared to iPads and Samsung tablets. I even have to mention specifically Samsung tablets because there are many Android tablets with pen support that have lousy palm rejection.

Switching from drawing on an iPad or Android tablet to a touchscreen pen display will feel off. Shortcuts activating when they should not is frustrating and really breaks the workflow.

Using the included artist glove will improve the user experience significantly. So I highly recommend using the artist glove if you want to use the touchscreen for drawing.

Touch support not working well is a long-time Windows problem. Not even the Microsoft Surface Pro have flawless touchscreen support.

It is not surprising that Windows has better touch support than Mac. What's surprising to me is many of the drawing apps on Mac actually support touch, although there are many issues. XPPen's touchscreen support with Mac is better than the Huion Kamvas Pro 19.

The three drawings below were all drawn with Clip Studio Paint, which in my opinion performs better on a touchscreen compared to other apps. But even so, the drawing experience is not ideal with the touchscreen enabled.

I would usually use Medibang Paint to create some drawings but this time I'm using CSP because Medibang Paint doesn't work as well on the touchscreen as there's no palm rejection for the desktop version. Medibang Paint on iPads and Android tablets have palm rejection, but the desktop version does not.

This was drawn with Concepts app. There were unintentional touch shortcuts. Concepts support 2, 3, 4 finger shortcuts but they may conflict with XPPen driver's touch shortcuts.

These were also drawn with Concepts.

I didn't really have any issues with drawing except for the unintentional touch shortcuts. So to get better a drawing experience, wearing the artist glove is a must, or just disable the touchscreen and use keyboard shortcuts instead.

Many of the drawing apps on Windows have palm rejection that prevents stray strokes from appearing, but that's not the case on a Mac.

Android support

This pen display can work with Android devices that can output video signal, but the pen display has to be connected to power.

Support for Android is not good.

• Medibang can click, but cannot draw
• Concepts, Sketchbook, Infinite Painter and CSP treat the pen no different from a finger
• IbisPaintX and Krita works with pressure and palm rejection

And you cannot swipe up on the pen display to go back to the home screen.

Conclusion

The XPPen Artist Ultra 16 has a wonderful OLED display and fantastic pen performance, and those are the two main selling points.

Touchsceen support is nice to have but unfortunately touchscreen support for drawing just does not work as well compared to drawing on iPads and Samsung tablets.

This pen display is a good product. Just note the pros and cons, strengths and limitations.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Beautiful design
+ Good build quality
+ Bright, vibrant, sharp display
+ Excellent colour accuracy
+ OLED has much better contrast than LCD
+ It is possible to power the pen display to maximum brightness with a single USB-C cable connection
+ Fantastic pen performance
- OLED may not work with certain colour calibrators
- Touchscreen/palm rejection does not work flawlessly compared to drawing on iPads and Samsung tablets
- Stand is not built into the body
- OLED has PWM which may affect people with sensitive eyes
- Support for drawing apps on Android is a mixed bag

Availability

The XPPen Artist Ultra 16 is available from XPPen online store.

Remember to get extra felt nibs.

By the way, if you have intention to buy this pen display, considering using the affiliate links above. I get to make some commission for each sale but at not extra cost to you. Your support helps me put out more reviews like the one you've just read.

And if my review is inaccurate in any way, let me know in the comments section below.