Designed for professional artists, graphic designers, and digital creators, the Huion Kamvas Pro 13 2.5K is a digital drawing pen display with some impressive features, and exceptional performance and all at a very affordable price. Whether you are one of the aforementioned or simply trying to streamline and find a pen display that has a whole host of features to suit your budget, this might just be the one for you.
Design and Build Quality
The pen display is a slim and sleek design making it highly portable. This is the same as its competitors, but what makes it stand out at this price point is the highly responsive 2.5K display. The build quality of the pen display is solid in construction, lightweight, portable, and feels durable.
Included with the pen display is a lightweight and again sturdy stand that provides enough varying working angles for anyone due to its design. I have read in other reviews that they felt the stand was slightly flimsy, however, this may have been addressed by Huion as the one I received in the box is of brushed aluminum construction with a sold plastic base and is definitely sturdy.
Performance
The pen is battery-free and has 8192 levels providing a natural and precise drawing or editing experience. The pen feels great in the hand to use and also supports titling sensitivity, allowing for more dynamic brush strokes and shading effects depending on your own creative style.
The 13.3'' screen however has to be the standout feature of this pen display with a resolution of 2.5K, (2560 x 1440 pixels) your images are sharp and vibrant even when zoomed in. The parallax is minimal thanks to the fully laminated screen, which reduces the gap between the pen tip and the display surface, resulting in a lag-free drawing experience.
The screen also offers excellent color accuracy supporting 120% sRGB color gamut. Has a wide viewing angle and the anti-glare surface reduces reflections which creates an immersive drawing experience at every angle. I tried this at many angle variations until I found the one that worked best for me ergonomically, and never once did I have to adjust my angle to reduce any glare.
The pen display comes with a host of accessories to get you up and running from the start and includes various cable connections depending on how your system is configured. I use a two-screen Benq monitor setup so have purchased an HDMI splitter/switcher so that I can keep all connected and running at once. 
Display Driver and Software
Once all plugged into your system, be that Windows, macOS, or even Android devices you download the driver from the Huion site, you can then configure your pen display to your needs via the very intuitive UI.
- Sidebar Express Keys - Can be customized to your preferences or left as default depending on your workflow.
- Working area - Can be configured to your screen size or set to however you wish to use it. You can also rotate the display through 0, 90, 180, or 270 degrees.
- Monitor calibration is completed via the pen in a series of 9 crosshairs that you touch in sequence using your 'Common Pen Holding Posture'.
- Pressure Sensitivity Adjustment - With varying settings to choose from and adjust to your individual requirements.
- Display Settings - Again these are completely adjustable to your preferences and include, Color Temperature and Color Space.
Side Note: A Small Editing Discovery I Made While Using the Pen Display
I've never been a great fan of a smooth painting effect in my digital art. I feel that I'm lacking in my artistic abilities so always use a palette knife brush to paint, and admittedly I feel it now suits my style. However, when using the pen display I worked quite zoomed in, and sometimes even more than the zoom amount in the image below. With the screen being so clear at 2.5K it was quite off-putting for me to still see a relatively smooth effect even with the palette knife brush; Enter the noise layer.
This is something I had never considered before so if you do any digital art give it a go and see what you think. The noise amount varied for the three images produced for the article but once created I felt it added a different dimension to the images, subtly but enough to change the image for me entirely and something I will use going forward thanks to the pen display.
Editing Software
As you can imagine the pen display is compatible with different drawing and editing software. My main software is Photoshop, Lightroom, Capture One, and Camera Raw and I had no issues whatsoever when using the Huion with these. Editing my photographic images felt surprisingly natural using the pen display, which I was not expecting as I'm usually viewing the monitor while using a tablet. With the pen display, I felt more involved/connected with the images I was working on instead of the slight disconnect I feel with a tablet and monitor. This was especially noticeable when working in Camera Raw/Lightroom/ Photoshop using masks as for some reason I felt more control when working with the smaller details of the add/subtract, and other masking features that required a higher level of accuracy.
What I Liked
- Highly responsive pen
- Zero lag
- Fully configurable setup
- High-quality 2.5K (QHD) screen
- Display surface
- Can be used as a second monitor
- Minimal deskspace is taken up
- Very portable
What Could Be Improved
- Depending on your set up the cables might seem a bit of an overkill, however, they do not get in the way.
Final Thoughts
It's been a long time since I attempted any digital painting and it's always been on my Wacom Intuos Medium Pro, the first model which they don't even manufacture anymore, and it's served me well for both photographic editing and digital art. Many years ago I purchased the 21" Huion pen display which I enjoyed but the lag for me at the time was slightly off-putting so within a couple of months I moved that on. This smaller and highly portable tablet is a completely different beast with its 2.5K resolution and zero lag that for me breathed new life into digital art and editing. No longer am I sitting looking at a monitor to edit but working on the image itself. That may seem an unusual comment but if you use either a tablet or a pen display you'll understand what I mean.
For photographic editing, it also felt like the right way to work especially when masking as you can work in the image instead of work viewing the image. Sure you can zoom in on your monitor and get the results you are after, and I have done that for many many years, but something feels different when working in the image; well for me anyway.
If you are thinking about a pen display for photographic editing or digital art, the Huion Kamvas Pro 13 2.5K is well worth considering due to the screen, with its smooth real feel and highly responsive surface, it might just be the best alternative to the market leader. The whole experience with the pen display has whetted my appetite to do more digital art again and I think I'll also check out some of the larger displays on offer from Huion as well to see how that compares.
In the meantime, if a pen display is something you have been considering you can check out a whole host of displays and tablets that Huion offers here.
