Huion 1060 Plus Review

If you are any type of graphic artist, be that a traditional painter who uses applications like Photoshop or Mischief, or more of a 3D modeller and virtual sculptor, you need to own a graphics tablet. Using a standard mouse just isn`t an option with this type of work. With a tablet and stylus you get that natural fluidity and pressure sensitivity as you would if drawing with a pen on paper, nothing can beat that, except possibly drawing with a pen on paper.

Now I’m not suggesting that you rush out and buy yourself an expensive interactive pen display like the Cintiq or GT-220. A simple graphics tablet will do, particularly if you’re on a tight budget, or just starting out in the industry.

These days there are plenty to choose from with a host of companies offering their variations on what’s become a standard design. Huion is one of these companies and they have been producing graphic tablets for a while now. They have a wide range of products on offer and one of these is the 1060 Plus.The 1060 Plus is an updated version of the 1060 Pro, with the newer model allowing for all twelve express keys to be used as well as boasting a larger 8GB MicroSD card which comes installed. This gives the artist more freedom to take their work with them actually in the tablet, rather than separate memory sticks, plus for photographers it means you can simply put your memory card from your camera directly into the tablet.

So with such tough competition, is the 1060 Plus worth your time and money?

Read on to find out.

Unboxing

The 1060 Plus comes in a small, compact box which is also lightweight. Opening this box you will find all the components packed neatly away, with little wasted space.

As well as the 1060 Plus itself you also get a USB cable so you can connect it to your computer, be that a desktop PC, Mac or laptop. You also get the all-important stylus which is rechargeable, as well as its very own charging cable.Huion also supply plenty of extras, these include a pen stand which opens to reveal eight extra nibs, both black and white. You also get a generous amount of additional nibs too, 14 black and ten white, so it will be a long time before you run out.

They also supply two overlays for the working area, these are a replacement for the one already installed and a white variation which can be used for tracing.On top of all this they also supply a cloth to clean the working area with, and in some cases a handy glove too.

The Device Itself

From the outset I was impressed with the look and feel of the 1060 Plus. It’s solid, light weight and looks stylish too with an impressive drawing area of 10” by 6.25”. Plenty of room for your hand to move as you’re scribbling.

By the side of the drawing area you have twelve physical express keys as well as sixteen soft keys across the top of the device, all are fully customizable via the Huion software. These are great for freeing you from the keyboard although I did find the physical buttons quite firm and noisy when used, which may irritate your co-workers after a while.

Half way down the left side of the 1060 Plus is where the power socket and also the MicroSD card and slot are found. I did find the positioning of the power cable a little annoying and would rather it have been further back, or actually at the rear of the device. I am right handed so if I were to hold my left hand over the express keys it would also be resting on the cable, which could become uncomfortable after a while. It also means rather than the cable being neatly tucked away it runs in front of your keyboard, a position that can be quite awkward.

All in all the 1060 has a nice design and look to it, and the build quality is solid and doesn`t feel cheap.

The Stylus

Where would any graphics tablet be without its stylus? It’s pretty much the main feature and how one works, how it feels and what one is like to hold are all very important.The 1060 Plus stylus is almost identical to the rechargeable pen which comes with the GT-220, except the newer model has a rubber coating just near the base, where your fingers would be.

Its light, almost weighting as much as a basic ball point pen, and when you write or draw it feels comfortable to hold. Add to this the slight grain of the working area on the tablet you have quite a natural feel to each stroke, as if you were drawing on paper.The stylus has two configurable buttons on the side but no eraser at the back as this is where the charging cable is plugged in. Speaking of which a full charge is said to last you around three months, and the stylus will take around two hours to fully charge.

Working with the stylus is a different experience if you’re coming from another device, like an Intuos for example. The tip is very soft, almost springy, so you have a lot of room to apply the 2048 levels of pressure which all come through nicely onto your canvas.

Pen Tablet Drivers

A common issue amongst Huion devices seems to be with the drivers, and unfortunately the same applies here.

On day one I found that setting up the 1060 Plus was pretty straight forward. According to the website you can be up and running within 30 seconds, and for the most part this was true. Having used a Huion device previously I was aware that any other drivers could cause issues, so before I began I removed any older versions and also any alternatives, like the Wacom drivers, from my system.

I then installed the 1060 Plus drivers which came with the device, (version 11.0.4), the tablet was recognised and I was painting away in no time. My key applications all seemed to work too, all recognising the 2048 levels of pressure, which was great.

On day two I started my machine but noticed the system wasn`t following the mouse pointer as I moved it over the tablet. The Tablet PC software was showing it was connected which was odd so I simply unplugged the 1060 Plus, plugged it back in and it started to work. A minor irritation I know, but it gets better.

I wanted to do some pressure tests so I opened Photoshop and started drawing. All was well at this stage so I moved on to Mischief, but the pressure wasn’t registering. I also tried Krita but again the pressure wasn`t coming through. Finally I decided to try ZBrush and thankfully this did work, so two out of four compared to all four the previous day, with no idea what had changed.I went through and tried all the fixes Huion suggest. So firstly I used a checkbox in the Pen Tablet software titled Support TabletPC. They suggest you close your software, enable and then disable this to fix pressure issues. It didn`t fix them.I next disabled Flicks, and Hold Pen for Right Click from my Windows Pen and Tablet settings, again as suggested by Huion. Still no luck.

After various restarts and more tests I decided to download the newest drivers, version 11.0.7. Even though I uninstalled the previous version first there was still a conflict with the Wintab32.dll file which turned out to be locked by the Autodesk Application Manager and Dropbox, yes, Dropbox. With these closed I could finally install the update but even then I had no pressure sensitivity in Mischief or Krita.

This does all seem like its the end of the review for most people, broken drivers just shouldn`t be a thing these days especially with a device which has been shipped. The great thing about Huion though is I contacted them with my issues and within a day they had sent over some internal drivers for me to test, and the pressure worked again.

Yes, things still weren`t perfect. Pressure had returned but occasionally I had to restart Mischief to almost kick-start the drivers, so compared to how it was previously this was a step up.

Pen Tablet Software

The actual software which comes with the tablet is very basic. It focuses on the bare minimum needed to configure the stylus buttons, the express keys, soft keys and pen pressure, with no options to change these on a per application basis. You have one configuration for your whole system.

With that said their simplicity means that initially configuring the buttons, and making changes later is quick and easy to do.

As you can see below, the button screen is a no frills configuration window. You simply select a button and define a key from the drop down menu.

Although this is a quick and painless way to change the express keys there is no visual representation of what each button is. The only way to find out is to press and hope for the best, or open the utility and look. It would be nice to have some sort of quick reference guide, or on screen display to quickly remind you what each does.

No Touch or Tilt

With this tablet being an entry level model you won`t be getting any multi-touch abilities on the working area, which is a shame but to be honest something you could learn to live without.

When you put into perspective that this tablet costs £69.99 (at the time of writing) and one of a similar spec but which also has multi-touch functionality could be anywhere above £130 you certainly won`t miss the lack of a touch surface.The same could be said with the tilt recognition, or the lack of it. Again Huion don`t support it in the 1060 Plus but this is something I rarely use anyway, and it also tends to be found in the more expensive tablets.

The 1060 Plus in Use

]Putting the driver issues aside, the 1060 Plus is a very nice graphics tablet to use. As mentioned, the stylus is comfortable and responsive with the pressure coming through beautifully in both Photoshop and ZBrush.

There were slight niggles with Windows though. For example, when you are prompted because you are trying to run a program and have to give permission the stylus doesn`t register.

I also found that double tapping on an icon took a few attempts before it would launch the application.Below are a couple of pressure tests I did, just to demonstrate the results you could get with the 1060 Plus. Initially I began with a large canvas, zoomed out to 25%, but as I drew on the 1060 Plus I could clearly see some jitters in the lines compared to the other tablet.

I repeated the tests again, this time at 100% and the results were much more precise with just a few, minor wobbles present.

Should You Invest?

The 1060 Plus is a solid, nicely designed entry level graphics tablet. Yes the buttons are a bit firm and noisy and I do find myself longing for a touch ring of sorts, but now the drivers are working for me I can happily paint or sculpt in whatever application I chose.

The working area is a generous size and the pressure comes though onto the canvas well, although its not as precise when your working below a scale of 50%.

It was a shame that my first impressions of the device were tarnished with the dance around the drivers, but I was impressed with how Huion handled my issues, and resolved them quickly.

I guess it comes down to the competition and if we are honest there are similar graphics tablets available at around the same price. What the 1060 Plus has going for it though is the larger working area, multitude of configurable keys and also the addition of the MicroSD slot, which comes preinstalled with a generous 8GB card.So when you look at it that way, if you can handle the potentially buggy drivers, (which could be resolved by the time you read this), then the 1060 Plus could be the tablet to free your artwork from the rigidity of a mouse and push it to the next level.

Although Huion supplied the device for me to test, the opinions offered in this review are my own.

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More Choices from Huion

South East Asia: http://www.lazada.com.my/huiontablet/

Worldwide: http://www.aliexpress.com/store/1478357