Review: Frunsi RubensTab T12 Android tablet with pen

The Frunsi RubensTab T12 is a 12-inch Android 15 tablet with USI 2.0 pen support. The price is USD 249.

This tablet is being marketed as a drawing tablet. The pen performance is slightly different compared to the RubensTab T11 which I reviewed in 2023, and it's definitely not as good compared to the Wacom EMR pen tech and Apple Pencil.

The main thing with using this tablet for drawing is you'll have to know its limitations to work around those limitations.

Specifications

Things included

• Tablet
• Case
• USI 2.0 pen
• Charger
• USB-C to USB-C charging cable
• Artist glove
• Micro fiber cleaning cloth
• SIM ejector
• User manual
• Warranty card

Design

Design of the tablet looks ok, generic. Bezels are quite thin and uniform on all sides. Corners for the body and LCD are rounded off.

The front camera is just 5MP. Auto-brightness does not work well so it's best to disable that. There's no face unlock or fingerprint unlock.

The back is matte textured metal and there's an 8MP camera with flash. Overall build quality is solid enough. Tablet is not too thick. Dimensions are 279 x 174 x 7.9mm.

The included tablet case provides full protection on all sides. It's quite a thick case so it's gonna make the tablet much thicker. The pen can be stored inside the case.

The case has a stand that can be deployed at different angles.

Display

The display is a 12-inch LCD with 2000 x 1200 resolution. Refresh rate is 60Hz.

Colours look alright to me. The company did not mention the colour support. Viewing angles look ok, colours don't shift much when viewed from extreme angles. There is some IPS glow which is not unexpected from LCDs.

The display is laminated so there's no gap between the LCD and the glass surface. There is some thickness to the glass but parallax is not an issue on small displays.

The display comes with a glass protector already applied. The glass protector causes constant line breaks with the pen so I had to remove that. The display is glossy without anti-reflective coating.

Navigation gestures unfortunately do not work flawlessly for me. Swiping up works better when done slowly.

There's a microSD card slot for storage expansion. The 4-way speakers are loud but sound slightly hollow but it's not too bad. Volume buttons are located on the left when tablet is in landscape orientation.

Performance

The tablet comes with the midrange Mediatek MT8781 (2 x A76 2.2GHz, 6 x A55 2.0GHz), 6GB RAM and 128GB of storage. The Mediatek MT8781 is an extremely popular processor found in many midrange tablets.

Performance of the tablet is smooth enough. Responsiveness is not as instantaneous compared more expensive tablets, but that's to be expected.

For a tablet at this price point, performance is reasonable.

OS and software

The tablet runs on Android 15 and comes with Google Play Store. The UI is pretty much stock Android and there aren't many features. The default file browser is Google Files which is quite limited.

I don't see any bloatware, thankfully.

Line tests

Line tests below were created with Medibang Paint.

1. There's some jitter with slow diagonal lines.

2. Lines are unable to taper smoothly and sharply

3. Pen has difficulty drawing thin lines after thick. This is also a diagonal lines and there's some diagonal line wobble.

4. The pen is able to maintain consistent line width by applying consistent pressure.

5. When drawing dots, there's lack of pressure consistency. When drawing small dots, some dots may be big. When drawing big dots, some dots may be small.

6. No issues with cursor tracking or cursor misalignment. I was able to join separate lines together without gaps or lines overshooting.

Tilt works but with some apps tilt will only start after a few seconds.

The diagonal line wobble and jitter definitely affects pen accuracy. It is possible to increase the smoothing of lines in drawing app to make the lines smoother, but that will introduce more latency.

Drawing experience

Two things affect drawing experience, pen accuracy and palm rejection.

While it's possible to draw on this tablet, drawing experience is not ideal due to the diagonal line jitter or wobble.

Because the pen has difficulty detecting minimal changes in pressure when drawing with minimal pressure, it's more difficult to create lines with varying thickness. To get wider variety of line width, you'll have to adjust the brush size manually.

Palm rejection does not work well. Resting my palm on the display would occasionally cause unintentional undo or zoom. That's because resting the palm on the display would sometimes be recognised as two fingers, tap for under or pinch for zoom.

There are a few workarounds for palm rejection. My recommendation would be to wear the artist glove included. You can also disable double finger tab to undo, but that's a very convenient shortcut to disable. You may also assign the undo shortcut to three fingers instead of two fingers.

Instead of resting your palm, it may be better to rest your pinky finger. Or just wear the artist glove.

Battery life

Battery life is around 10-12 hours, sometimes longer depending on auto brightness.

Conclusion

The Frunsi RubensTab T12 is a budget tablet so there will be more limitations compared to more expensive tablets.

The tablet can be used for drawing, but the pen performance isn't that great. You really need to have low expectations to not be affected by how the pen performs. Kids probably won't mind the line quality as they are happy just to have a tablet.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Tablet design looks alright
+ Display colours look good
+ Display looks sharp enough
+ Has Google Play Store
+ Comes with a (thick) case
+ Laminated display
- Has slight jitter and wobble with slow diagonal lines
- Tilt only works after a split second
- No biometric unlock
- Auto brightness does not work well
- Navigation gestures works better when done slowly
- Glass protector will affect pen performance
- Palm rejection does not work well
- Audio sounds slightly hollow
- No pen battery life info

Availability

The Frunsi RubensTab T12 is available from Amazon US