Review: XPPen Artist Pro 27 (gen 2) 4K touchscreen pen display

Review unit provided by XPPen

XPPen has just released the Artist Pro 27 (gen 2), a 27-inch 4K touchscreen pen display, on 20 March 2026. Price at the time of review is USD 1899 (Euro 1999, £1799) and that includes free shipping to selected countries, and 18-months warranty.

During the launch promotion period from 20 March to 19 April, you can get 10% off the US price, and 5% off Europe and UK prices.

XPPen's big pen displays

This is the largest pen display from XPPen as the previous largest models are 24-inches.

And these are the 27-inch pen displays in the market currently:

XPPen's pricing is competitive.

Specifications

Things included

Everything's packed neatly in the box.

• Pen display
• Colour calibration report
• 2x pen holders
• Cover for pen display back
• 60W power adapter with barrel connector
• 2x power cable
• 1x USB-C video cable
• 1x full-size HDMI to full-size HDMI cable
• 1x full-size DisplayPort to full-size DisplayPort cable
• Pen case
• 1x USB-A to USB-C cable
• Replacement pen tips for X3 Pro and X3 Pro Slim pens
• Felt tips for X3 Pro pen
• XPPen ACK05 shortcut remote
• USB-A Bluetooth receiver for ACK05
• Artist glove
• User guide
• Warranty card
• Micro fiber cleaning cloth

These are the pen accessories. Extra pen nibs, pen holders.

These are the two pens included, the X3 Pro Smart Chip Stylus and the X3 Pro Slim pen.

The X3 Pro pen is thicker, has a silicone grip, and has two side buttons and an eraser. The X3 Pro Slim pen has two side buttons, and the back can be oped to store 4 replacement pen tips.

I've a separate detailed review created for the ACK05 Shortcut Remote so I won't mention that as much in this review for the pen display.

Design

This is a beautiful and well made pen display with solid build quality. Corners are rounded off. Bezels are quite thick and make the pen display look even bigger, but they allow your palm space to rest when your hands are near the edges.

Since the pen display is so big, you will need a big desk, and make sure there's enough space for your keyboard too.

There's a stand already attached and it's made with metal so the build quality is excellent.

Angle of the pen display can be adjusted easily by pulling and locking the latch behind. The moving part of the stand will roll (there are wheels). The pen display has two huge rubber feet in front with good grip on the table. The pen display weighs 7kg so it's quite heavy and very stable with no movement when drawing.

The pen display can be deployed vertically but it has a good chance of toppling.

The pen display supports 10 x 10cm VESA mount. You can consider the XPPen ACS15 desktop stand if you want to elevate the pen display to a more ergonomic height and vertical deployment. VESA dimensions are 10 x 10 cm.

The four buttons at the top right of the pen display will enable/disable touch, choose input source, adjust brightness and power.

There are two pen holders of different sizes, made for the thicker and slim pen. Having pen holders on the pen display is very convenient.

The smaller pen holder is made with silicone so that it will not scratch the slim pen's plastic body. The bigger pen holder is plastic because the bigger pen has a silicone grip.

Ports are located on the same side of the power button, and the cables will point inwards towards the stand. Ports are for power, HDMI, DisplayPort, USB-C video and 3.5mm audio.

There's a back cover to cover the cables to keep the back of the pen display neat and tidy.

Display

Colours on the 27-inch 4K touchscreen LCD looks great out of the box.

The display is already colour calibrated to the AdobeRGB space at the factory. Average Delta E is 0.89. Anything less than 2 is good, and less than 1 is fantastic. Average Delta E is the variance between the input colour and measured output colour.

I measured colour support for 100% sRGB, 93% NTSC, 95% AdobeRGB, 96% P3 and a maximum brightness of 382 nits.

Colour accuracy is quite high. AdobeRGB is good for graphic designers who work with print. 382 nits of brightness is higher than advertised.

The display has wide viewing angles. There's no colour shift or drop in brightness when viewing the display from extreme angles.

Anti-glare works well, not too aggressive. Visuals can be seen clearly through diffused reflections.

Matte textured surfaces usually adds grain, colour noise or anti-glare sparkle to affect the visual quality. All that is kept to a minimum on this pen display.

The matte surface is quite smooth to draw on. The tactile experience is similar to drawing on screenless tablets, and the surface is smoother compared to matte screen protectors. If you want more texture, use the felt pen tips, and I highly recommend buying more felt pen tips at the time of purchase.

The display is laminated but the glass is quite thick, so there will be parallax unless you calibrate the pen with the driver.

4K UHD resolution on a 27-inch display looks sharp. Pixelation is not noticeable. If you look really close, you may notice a hint of softness, but the display looks sharp from working distance away.

120Hz

Having a 120Hz display is a good upgrade. Mac and Windows handles 120Hz well. Animation for opening and minimising windows, scrolling and zooming webpages are extremely smooth.

When connected to my computers, my computer did not default to 120Hz so I have to manually adjust the settings.

Some drawing apps have not been updated to take advantage of 120Hz refresh rate though.

For example, Concepts apps works well with 120Hz and all the animation is extremely smooth for pan-zoom-rotate navigation gestures. However with Clip Studio Paint, navigation gestures still has that 60Hz choppy look, and Photoshop (Win) even looks like 30Hz or that could be due to my laptop's graphics card.

For drawing apps that do not support 120Hz, when drawing you may see the line appear chunk by chunk, relatively speaking. CSP despite it's 60Hz navigation look still has lines that appear very smoothly as they appear on screen.

Driver

I've tested driver v4.0.14 for Mac and Windows. Linux driver will be provided one month later.

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.

MacOS issues

MacOS may have issues with UI scaling because MacOS does not work well with 27-inch pen displays and 4K resolution. If you're unable to get sharp visuals from MacOS System Settings, you may have use the BetterDisplay app to handle UI scaling.

Touchscreen support

Having touchscreen for me is a bonus but not a must have. Touchscreen pen displays are usually more expensive so you can actually save a lot of money by not going with a touchscreen. But it is great that there are touchscreen pen displays who those who prefer touchscreens.

How touch behaves is different on MacOS and Windows. And how touch behaves with drawing apps is different from what you would expect when drawin g on iPads and Android tablets. If you use multiple platforms, e.g. Mac, Windows, iPads, Android, you can expect confusion with how touch works due to the inconsistent behaviour.

Touch support works better with Windows. Touch behaviour is what you would expect when using a phone, tablet or Windows tablet. You can use one finger to scroll or pan, tap and hold to select text, two fingers for pan, zoom and rotate.

For MacOS, scroll and pan requires two fingers. Selecting text on webpages requires swiping the finger across text, and not tap and hold.

Touch support will vary depending on OS and the drawing apps used. With MacOS, many panning, artwork will not track directly underneath the finger. When rotating, the rotation usually does not happen at the pivot between the fingers. Zoom works fine mostly, as in zoom will be from the pivot.

Palm rejection works quite well, but how well palm rejection works also depends on the drawing app used. Drawing apps with pen-only mode will have perfect palm rejection.

The driver supports 3, 4 and 5 finger shortcuts. Those shortcuts may interfere with shortcuts from drawing apps or Windows OS that use the same gestures. To prevent conflicts with gesture shortcuts, it's best to disable shortcuts from either XPPen driver, drawing app or Windows OS.

TOUCH SUPPORT WITH VARIOUS APPS
Below's a list of how touch works with various apps I've tested. Pan, zoom, rotate (at pivot), 2-finger undo and palm rejection work fine unless mentioned. When 60Hz app is mentioned, it means animation for navigation appears choppy (eg. 60Hz).

Windows

• Affinity Photo: Zoom does not work. No 2-finger undo. 120Hz app.
• Adobe Photoshop: No 2-finger undo. 30Hz app
• Adobe Fresco: Works well. 120Hz app
• Adobe Illustrator: No 2-finger undo. No palm rejection. 60Hz app.
• Clip Studio Paint: Works well. 60Hz app. 120Hz line.
• Concepts: Works well 120Hz app
• Krita: Works well. 120Hz app
• Medibang Paint: Rotation is not a pivot point. No palm rejection. No 2-finger undo. 60Hz app. 120Hz line.
• Sketchable Plus: No 2-finger undo. 120Hz
• Sketchbook: No 2-finger undo. 120Hz app
• StylusX: Works well 120Hz app

Animation for Photoshop on Windows looks noticeably more choppy compared to other apps.

Mac

• Affinity Photo: Panning does not track under finger. No 2-finger undo. No palm rejection. 60Hz app.
• Adobe Photoshop: Panning does not track under finger. Rotate from centre of display. No 2-finger undo. No palm rejection. 60Hz app.
• Clip Studio: No 2-finger undo. No palm rejection. 60Hz app. 120Hz line.
• Krita: Panning does not track under finger. No 2-finger undo. No palm rejection. 60Hz app.
• Medibang: Panning does not track under finger. Rotate from centre of display. No 2-finger undo. No palm rejection. 60Hz app.
• Sketchbook: No panning. Rotate from centre of display. No 2-finger undo. No palm rejection. 60Hz app.

All the drawing apps I have on the Mac do not support palm rejection and 2-finger undo, and all looks like 60Hz apps.

Android

• Navigation gestures work with drawing apps. Pen pressure or palm rejection may/may not work depending on drawing apps. Tilt usually does not work.

Line tests

Line tests below were created with Medibang Paint

1. Initial activation force is very low. Thin lines can be drawn easily even with a thick brush. There's slight wobble with my hand drawn lines, but lines drawn with a ruler are perfectly straight.

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.

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.

There is still some latency. I'm actually not sure if latency has improved with the 120Hz when compared to other XPPen pen displays but latency isn't something I think about when drawing, so I can say that latency is not an issue.

Drawing experience

Since the pen performance is excellent so I don't have negative things to say about that. The line quality you can get is definitely good enough for creating professional art.

Drawing experience is mostly affect by touch gestures not working consistently, e.g. some apps may or may not support 2-finger undo, pan zoom and rotate may not happen at the pivot point between the fingers. Touch behaviour is inconsistent because different apps implement touch control differently.

Palm rejection works quite well but is not perfect. To get better palm rejection, it's better to wear the artist glove provided. You will get perfect palm rejection with apps that have pen-only mode. I feel like palm rejection is slightly better than the XPPen Artist Ultra 16 but I can't be sure.

Touch support just works better with Windows, but even with Windows there are some inconsistencies with touch.

This was drawn with Clip Studio Paint on Windows.

The three drawings below were all drawn with Clip Studio Paint (Win) and it works quite well. Pan, zoom, rotate work as expected, and there's 2-finger undo. Palm rejection is flawless as there's pen-only mode.

Workflow is smooth and uneventful. There are no surprised. Lines come out exactly the way I expected.

Concepts app is actually my main drawing app on iPads, Android tablets and Windows. Tilt doesn't work that well specifically with this app, and that's not surprising as tilt doesn't work well with many other touchscreen pen displays I've tested. Pen pressure definitely needs to be adjusted to get the pressure to perform and feel better. This app supports 2, 3 and 4 finger shortcuts without issues.

Another fantastic app that works great on this touchscreen pen display is StylusX.

Here's a 1hr video review

Conclusion

The XPPen Artist Pro 27 (gen 2) has fantastic hardware, and that includes the excellent pen performance. Display quality is fantastic. So it's 5/5 from the hardware side.

The drawing experience is mostly positive since the pen performance is great. Main thing that affects drawing performance is really just the inconsistent touch support that varies across different drawing apps and OS. This inconsistent touch support will get confusing if you're someone who uses multiple touchscreen devices for drawing. But this is probably something you can get used to with time, it's kinda like using Mac and Windows keyboard layout and hitting the wrong keyboard shortcuts occasionally.

And then there's the inconsistent performance of 120Hz refresh rate. Mac and Windows OS handles 120Hz really well and that makes the computer feel very responsive. But not all drawing apps have been updated to take advantage of the 120Hz.

I don't think this pen display has any major deal breakers.

The pricing seems competitive. So if you're looking for huge touchscreen pen display, this could be the one to consider.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Beautiful design
+ Solid build quality
+ Stand can adjust to many angles
+ Bright, vibrant, sharp display
+ 120Hz works well with OS
+ High colour accuracy, 95% AdobeRGB measured
+ Matte drawing surface has nice texture to draw on
+ Matte glass surface is unlikely to scratch
+ Matte glass has minimal grain/colour noise/anti-glare sparkle
+ Wide viewing angles
+ Supports USB-C video, HDMI, DisplayPort
+ Shortcut remote included
+ Two pens are included
+ Pen does not require charging
+ Pen supports tilt and 16K levels of pressure sensitivity
+ Excellent pen performance
+ Does not produce much heat
+ Floating Menu gives you eight more shortcuts
- Touch behaviour is inconsistent across OS and apps
- 120Hz does not work with all drawing apps
- Palm rejection does not work as well compared to iPads and Android tablets
- Display settings are only available from driver, not OSD

Availability

The XPPen Artist Pro 27 (gen 2) is available from XPPen online store.

Consider using my affiliate link above when you're buying the pen display to support my blog and the work I do here.