Review: Huion Inspiroy Frego pen tablet

Review unit provided by Huion

Huion has just released the Inspiroy Frego S (L310) and Inspiroy Frego M (L610) wireless pen tablets in August 2024. Price is USD 79.99 and USD 99.99 for the small and medium size respectively.

In terms of product category, they are positioned above the older Inspiroy series, Inspiroy 2 and the more expensive Inspiroy Dial 2.

Specifications

Bottom line

The Huion Inspiroy Frego are no-frills pen tablets with excellent drawing performance.

One huge selling point of this pen tablet is it works really well with Android tablets. The drawing area aspect ratio will match the connected tablet. And it can also work with iOS devices, although usage is only limited to HiPaint and Ibis Paint X apps.

While it's nice to have hotkeys for shortcuts, not having them is not a deal breaker at least for me because I prefer having my keyboard by the side for shortcuts. But if you do need hotkeys, Huion does sell other pen tablets with hotkeys, such as the Inspiroy 2. Or you can get the Huion K20 KeyDial Mini shortcut remote.

Things included

The things included are

• Pen tablet
• Huion PW550S pen
• 10x replacement plastic pen nibs
• Nib remover
• User manual

There is no pen case, and no replacement felt nibs (Huion PN06F).

Design

Huion Inspiroy Frego has a simple and clean design as it does not have any hotkeys.

From the top, there are four white markers that mark the boundary of the drawing area which are 6.3 x 4 inch and 10 x 6.25 inch respectively for the small and medium size.

When it comes to pen tablet sizes, I usually recommend a medium 10 x 6 inch pen tablet because it pairs well with most monitor sizes, up to 27-inches. In other words, 10 x 6.25 inch drawing area works well with monitors 27-inches and smaller.

The small is noticeably smaller than the medium. The whole small tablet is smaller than the drawing area of the medium tablet. 6.3 x 4 inch probably pairs better with laptop displays which are smaller, but even so I would recommend getting the medium if you have the budget, that and the S tablet does not support tilt sensitivity.

There's a pen holder made of cloth at the top edge.

Power and Bluetooth pairing buttons are located at the top right, and the USB-C charging port is located at the other side. Battery life is said to be 24 hours. So if you draw 8 hours daily, battery life is 3 days.

The tablet can still be used while charging.

The tablet is quite thin and the front is curved down slightly to serve as a comfortable wrist rest.

The four rubber feet have good grip on the bottom.

Not sure if you can see the fingerprints in the photo above. The matte surface of this tablet attracts fingerprints easily.

Pen

The included Huion PW550S pen supports tilt and 16K levels of pressure sensitivity. This pen is comfortable to hold with a matte texture plastic grip which will not attract dust.

Note that Frego M supports tilt while Frego S does not. If you're buying the tablet for drawing purposes, definitely go with the Frego M with tilt sensitivity.

There are two customisable side buttons, no eraser at the back. The pen is not powered by battery so no charging is required.

The pen has some weight in it to roll up so that the side buttons are always facing up. Nice little detail to design from Huion.

The pen that came with my review unit was installed with a felt nib.

The felt nib does provide a tactile drawing experience. The pen can be heard while drawing but it can sound screechy at times so I prefer the hard plastic pen nibs instead.

Strangely, this time the replacement pen nibs they packed are all plastic whereas sometimes half would be felt nibs. Anyway, the Huion PN06F felt nibs can be purchased from the Huion online store for USD 10 for ten pieces.

According to Huion, the pen nib movement is 0.4mm so it's really minimal.

Driver

The drivers I've tested are Windows driver version 15.7.6.1314 and Mac driver version 15.6.6.55, both released on 5 July 2024. A Linux driver is also available.

Windows and Mac drivers have similar functionality except the Windows driver has the additional Windows Ink setting that you may have to toggle on or off if pressure is not working as expected.

There are no hotkeys to program.

Here's where you can change the mapping area. Aspect ratio for the small and medium tablets are 1.575 and 1.6 respectively and they will pair well with 16:10 aspect ratio displays.

Here's where you can customise the pen's two side buttons.

Below are shortcuts you can set to the pen buttons:

• Keyboard shortcut
• Mouse: Left click, right click, middle click, double left click, wheel forward, wheel backward. With option for Ctrl, Alt, Shift, Win
• Tool: Switch screen, eraser, redo, undo, clear
• Run program
• System application: Lock screen, sleep, power off, show/hide desktop, task view, Start menu, Calculator
• Multimedia: Previous song, next song, play/pause, volume up, volume down, mute
• Precision mode: Make the cursor move more slowly
• Pan/scroll: Faster scrolling with the pen
• Quick menu: Add 6 shortcuts to popup menu
• Fixed pressure sensitivity: After you draw, press button to lock the pressure/line width
• None

For users of dual displays, you can set Switch Display to switch between A, B and A, B, A+B (across both displays).

Pen pressure can be adjusted by moving the three control points around.

The settings you've created can be saved and backed up.

Line test

Line tests below were created with Medibang Paint.

1. Initial activation force is low. Thin lines can be drawn easily. There's no problem with slow diagonal line wobble or jitter.

2. Lines can taper smoothly and sharply

3. Line transition from thin to thick is smooth. Thin lines can be drawn easily after drawing thick lines.

4. It's easy to maintain line consistency by applying consistent pressure

5. Dots can be drawn easily by tapping

6. This cursor misalignment test for pen displays is not relevant here.

Tilt works fine. I've tested with Photoshop, Krita, Sketchbook Pro and Concepts.

Drawing experience

Drawing experience is excellent. The pen is very sensitivity and is capable to detecting minor changes in pressure. Performance is consistent and predictable.

The increase of pressure sensitivity from 8K to 16K is just a minor improvement for pen tablets. I personally can't see or feel any difference between 8K vs 16K pressure sensitivity.

Instead of talking about how well the tablet works with Windows and MacOS, I want to talk about Android and Apple tablet support.

One huge selling point of the Huion Inspiroy Frego is it works really well with Android tablets. It also works with iOS devices but usage is limited to HiPaint and Ibis Paint X apps, and the Huion tablet has to be enabled within the app settings first.

The picture above shows the mapping of drawing area to the Android or Apple phones and tablets. For the Frego S, that tablet has to be rotated to match vertical phone format.

Huion Inspiroy Frego is also able to match the aspect ratio of the connected device. For example, Frego will use a 3:2 drawing area when used with a tablet that has a 3:2 display.

I've tested many pen tablets in the past and mapping for the drawing area is always quite confusing. Now with the Inspiroy Frego, you get automatic drawing area mapping and aspect ratio matching. For iOS, mapping and aspect ratio mapping only works with HiPaint and Ibis Paint X apps.

This was drawn with the Huion tablet using HiPaint on the iPad. The drawing process is smooth without much issues except

• Sometimes clicking on the colour wheel does nothing
• Cannot drag and drop layers to arrange them

This was written with HiPaint. Writing experience was good. Strokes were able to taper naturally.

This was drawn with the Ibis Paint X, also on the iPad. The palm rejection settings did not work so I was still able to draw with my finger which is a non-issue since I'm drawing on the Huion tablet. Finger gestures do not work when the cursor is visible, meaning if you want to switch tools you have to move the pen away from the tablet first. This will take time to get used to. HiPaint does not have this issue.

This Huion tablet will let you draw on your Android tablet that has lousy pen support or no pen support.

It will take time to get used to having one hand on the Android tablet switching tools and the other hand drawing. The Huion tablet does not support finger gestures.

Conclusion

The Huion Inspiroy Frego pen tablets look good and have excellent drawing performance.

Limitations would include the lack of hotkeys. If you need hotkeys you can consider Huion Inspiroy 2 which is wired, or get the Huion K20 Keydial Mini. The other thing you must know is Frego S does not support tilt sensitivity.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Beautiful clean and simple design
+ Excellent pen performance
+ Wireless
+ Works well with Android tablets
+ Can work with iPhones and iPads, but only with HiPaint and Ibis Paint X apps
- No hotkeys
- Small model does not support tilt sensitivity
- Matte surface body collects fingerprints easily
- Felt nib can sound screechy on the drawing area

Availability

The Inspiroy Frego S (L310) and Inspiroy Frego M (L610) are available from the Huion online store.

You can also find the two pen tablets on Amazon

Inspiroy Frego S (L310): US | CA | UK | DE | FR | ES | IT | JP

Inspiroy Frego M (L610): US | CA | UK | DE | FR | ES | IT | JP

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