Review: Hanvon SenTIP 1201WD

(Originally published in 3D Artist Issue 31)

Drawing directly on the screen lets you see exactly what you’re doing and work in a natural manner.

Sentip 1201WD

Price (Inc. VAT 20%) £799.99

Website

http://www.hanvon.com/

The Sentip 1201WD lets you draw directly on its LCD screen, helping to bridge the gap between traditional and digital art production.

An often heard complaint from digital artists is that using a mouse for drawing, painting or sculpting is like working with a brick or a bar of soap. While others using a pen and tablet express frustration at a ‘disconnect’ between drawing on the tablet and what appears on screen. The Hanvon SenTIP 1201WD is an LCD interactive pen display that sets out to remove these barriers, by letting you draw, paint, sculpt and write directly on the screen.

The LCD area has 2048 levels of pen pressure sensitivity and 5080 LPI (lines per inch) which is fairly standard for a professional tablet. The 26.1 cm x 16.3 cm (12.1 inch diagonal) active working area functions best at a 1280 x 800 resolution, but can be confining with multiple menus open. It’s bright, has good contrast and the only main drawback is the 18 bit colour depth (6 bit per channel) resulting in 262,144 colours. Whether this is a problem depends largely on what you’re using it for. After constant sketching for eight hours the lower right of the tablet becomes mildly warm, but comfortable to touch.

Eight finger sensitive express-touch buttons, four each side of the LCD, can be set to frequently used keys or disabled. Below them is a touch strip for functions such as zoom, scroll or brush size change. Having these customisable buttons significantly reduces reliance on the keyboard. The cordless, battery-free pen responded very accurately, and performed well, even at the screen edge. Two buttons on the side of the pen act as a mouse’s left and right buttons and it has an eraser on top. The eraser is pressure sensitive making small changes possible. The pen is comfortable to hold and use for extended sessions it also comes with a pen holder and spare pen. Every 2D and 3D application used in testing was supported, with great redraw rates.

As the tablet requires a mains power source and a PC or Mac, portability is limited but it’s lightweight enough to carry with a laptop. The bundled software consists of apps for converting handwriting to text, adding a signature, handwriting emails, adding annotations and creating whiteboards. The handwriting recognition is very accurate. Aimed at professionals, it’s an expensive item for most hobbyist and student budgets. But if you can afford it, and the limited colour depth isn’t a concern, artists of any level will benefit from working on screen.

Summary

The liberating experience of being able to work directly on the screen is worth the cost.

The rear adjustable stand, and overall size of the tablet, lets you work with it resting on your lap or setup on your desk.

The working environment can quickly get cramped with only a few menu’s open. Hiding unused UI elements and minimising menu’s helps alleviate screen congestion.