If you’re looking for a pro-level drawing display for drawing with friends and colleagues, or doing other creative work, you might want to take a look at the Huion Kamvas Pro 19. With their latest generation PenTech 4.0 and a high-quality display, the tablet is aimed at the dreamers. And after testing it, we have no doubts that this will be a great tool for bringing your big ideas to life.

Huion sent us their tablet to review, and share with you our recommended approach for using it with Magma.

Box contents

Before we get into the drawing experience and settings, let’s look at what comes in the box:

• The 19” display tablet (18.4" to be precise)

• Keydial Mini shortcut remote

• Pen case with spare nibs (5x standard and 5x felt)

• Both the Pw600 Standard pen and the PW600S Slim pen

• One 3-in-2 cable

• USB-C to USB-C cable

• Another USB-C power cable

• Power adapter

• Palm rejection artist glove

• Cleaning cloth

• Quick start guide

• Color calibration report from the factory

Core features

• PenTech 4.0
  The new pens from Huion are impressively sensitive. The initial activation is really low and you’re getting 16k levels of pressure sensitivity. That pressure range might sound impressive, but in my opinion, the initial activation is a far more valuable spec when it comes to drawing tablets, as well as the accuracy of the lines. The included PW600 and PW600S pens handle this very well.
  
  

  One pen follows the typical tapered design that is broader toward the tip. The other is much slimmer and more even in shape from front to back. Each of the pens is individually recognized, so you could even set completely different pressure curves and buttons settings for the pens and pick them up as two completely separate tools.
  
  

• Touch display
  The Kamvas Pro 19 supports 10-point multi-touch. This is certainly a nice feature to have, but it can add quite a bit more to the price. So if you’re on a tighter budget, you might want to consider a non-touch version.
  
  

  The touch response is wonderfully smooth and works with Magma's gesture support. The included glove has some extra padding on the side to reduce accidental touch actions, which can sometimes occur quite easily. (Note: touch support for MacOS is still in beta at the time of writing this.)
  
  

• Anti-glare low sparkle etched glass
  If you get a lot of light in your room, or have a lightbulb hanging over your desk, the etched glass diffuses that light so that you don’t get sharp reflections. It also adds a slight texture for a more controlled drawing experience, especially when you add a felt nib to the pen.
  
  

• 4k High-res display and high color gamut
  The quality of the 18.4” display is a significant increase on my laptop display. Its great color accuracy means that if I want to prepare artwork for print, what I see on my screen will be much closer to the printing result.|
  
  

  It’s a fully-laminated display, meaning that there is no gap between the glass and the actual display. The cursor appears directly below the pen tip and maintains its position well even when the pen is angled.

The driver

Before getting started, you will need to download and install the driver. The new Huion Tablet application on your computer is where you’ll be able to customize everything about the tablet: the work area, the pen buttons and pressure curves, and the buttons of the shortcut remote.

First test

Setup on the desk

The Kamvas Pro 19 has fold-out legs on the underside as well as holes for VESA mounting. So, you can set this up on your desk in whatever way best suits you. The legs are very sturdy too, so you don't have to worry about movement when applying a bit of pressure or resting your arm on the tablet.

Personally, the built-in kickstand sets the tablet at an angle that doesn’t suit me. I prefer a slightly steeper angle. So, I used a different fold out stand. Huion has a variety of stand options available on their store.

Pressure and line quality

The pressure response with both of the pens is fantastic. These pens, with Huion’s PenTech 4.0, have a low 2 grams of Initial Activation Force required. So, you’ll hardly have to apply any pressure for a line to appear.

This means that when I have a large brush size with the pressure setting on, I can make both very light or very thin lines and thick or heavy ones without needing to adjust my settings much. The pressure response is fantastic. Drawing lines from thin to thick and back to thin was easy to control.

The lines also come out clean, with very little need for any stabilization. There is no noticeable wobble when making slow diagonal lines, and very fast strokes register perfectly. Overall, an impressive experience.

💡The tablet also supports 60 degrees of tilt. We do not yet support tilt in Magma, but it worked well when tested in other applications. While tilting the pen, it maintains good cursor alignment under the pen nib.

When it comes to the edges of the display, such as around the toolbar, the cursor also remains accurately placed.

How to set your tablet up for Magma

Kamvas Pro 19 allows for a lot of customization. Between the touch gestures, pen buttons, and Keydial, you can program many of functions and shortcuts for what you’d normally use your keyboard for. For a full list of our keyboard shortcuts, open the Application Settings from your Magma canvas, or view more in our guide.

If you use multiple programs for drawing, painting, and other creative tasks, you can save custom Settings profiles for each. When creating a profile for Magma, you’ll select your browser as the chosen application. You’ll have to do this for the tablet and Keydial separately.

Touch gestures

As with most pen and touch display tablets where you’re drawing with a stylus, I recommend disabling the 1-finger drag setting in Magma. This prevents drawing with your finger and reduces the chances of accidental touch input. The artist glove included with the tablet has some additional padding to prevent that as well.

Magma has a range of touch gestures that you can adjust, going up to 5-finger tap and press. Some of the standard ones include two-finger double tap to undo, two-finger pinch/drag to zoom or rotate and pan the canvas, and a four-finger tap to hide the Magma UI.

💡If you are on Windows 11, the operating system 3- and 4-finger gestures may override Magma’s gestures. Unfortunately, disabling the gestures in Windows settings did not solve this for me. You can get around this by applying one finger first and then completing the gesture.

The pens… two of them

The are two things you can customize about the pens. First is the pressure curve, which lets you adjust the pressure feel of the pen. The other is the button shortcuts.

I like to use my front pen button for my eyedropper tool (Alt). This makes picking colors directly from my canvas much faster. Better yet, set it to right-click and make sure the mouse button action is assigned to the eyedropper. This way I can also use the same button to open up the layer menu.

I prefer the broader of the two pens, not only because of its shape, but also because of the third button. I use this to switch which screen my cursor is active on. This is great for my three-monitor setup.

The Keydial controller

This is where most of the customization potential lies. There are 18 individual buttons which can also be pressed in different combinations to create even more shortcuts. You also get a dial which can cycle through 3 different functions using the button in the middle.

Below is how I’ve set my keys up. To remember things more easily, I’ve grouped shortcuts in the first three rows to cover different needs: tools, layer actions, and selection actions. The rest cover the modifier keys, opening the Quick Menu, and displaying a preview of all my settings.

💡Pro tip: Unlock even more customization potential by adjusting Magma’s shortcuts in such a way that you can combine buttons of the Keydial with the ones set to be modifiers.

For example, I have one button set to B for activating my brush tool. You could combine that with another button set to a modifier to trigger something else as Ctrl+B or Alt+B.

The Quick Menu

The Quick Menu lets you create an on-screen menu with some additional actions that perhaps you don’t use as often or cannot fit into the Keydial. You can set this to one of the buttons either on your pen or your controller.

You can pin this on the screen or have it disappear once you select one of the menu items. Especially when you are working on a slightly larger screen like this, it’s nice to be able to program some actions that will appear directly under your pen than having to pin the icon on your toolbar or search through the app menus.

Things we like about the tablet

After spending a couple of weeks with the tablet, here’s what we love about the Huion Kamvas Pro 19:

• 19” is a great size: it still allows for some portability while not taking up an excessive amount of space on the desk;

• The 4k UHD which also gives much better color accuracy and resolution than my laptop display;

• The size also allows for multitasking or having settings and reference windows open in Magma without obstructing the drawing area too much;

• Multi-touch support frees up the need to program navigation into the shortcut remote;

• A shortcut controller is included, giving a lot of customizability;

• It has both foldable feet and VESA holes on the back to mount on monitor arm to suit different setups.

Conclusion

It’s difficult to find negative points about the Kamvas Pro 19. The sensitive and responsive pens deliver a fantastic drawing experience. Using the touch input for navigation is very smooth, and the display looks great.

The size and weight of the tablet makes it portable enough for carrying between home and university or the office. However, this is not the sort of tablet you’re going to take with you to a coffee shop to draw. There are other options more suitable for that.

Despite some minor quirks which seem to be specific to Chrome, I’ve really enjoyed using this tablet over the past couple of weeks and look forward to painting more with it.

If you like what you see and you think the Huion Kamvas Pro 19 would suit both your needs and your budget, then be sure to check out the Huion online store and Amazon store pages. Huion is running a big sale between 21 Nov and 2 Dec 2024 with up to 20% off that you should take advantage of.