Review: Huion Kamvas Pro 19 pen display (2024) with touch support

Review unit provided by Huion

The Huion Kamvas Pro 19 and Kamvas Pro 27 pen displays were released in early 2024 and these are Huion's best pen displays to date. My first experience with Huion products was more than 10 years ago and it is amazing to see how much the products have improved over the years.

Both Kamvas Pro 19 and 27 are 4K pen displays with etched glass and touch support (only for Windows). You can think of these two as the successor to the Huion Kamvas Pro 24 (4K) which was released in 2021. The new models now use PenTech 4 that supports up to 16K levels of pressure sensitivity have a touchscreen.

Prices for the Kamvas Pro 19 and 27 are USD 1099 and USD 1999 respectively. Two years warranty is included. Free shipping may or may not be included depending on your location. Certain countries have import tax that make these products much more expensive.

Bottom line

To help you save time and decide whether to read further, let me give you the bottom line.

Huion Kamvas Pro 19 has excellent drawing experience thanks to the very sensitive pens. The matte surface provides a wonderful tactile feel. The display has good colour accuracy (93% AdobeRGB) but visual quality looks slightly soft due to the etched glass but it's not too bad. Since I do not have the 27-inch model, I can't say if the display quality is the same for the larger display.

The foldout feet can deploy at only 20 degrees angle. To prop up the display at other angles or higher, you'll have to buy yourself a laptop stand which I highly recommend to improve the ergonomics immensely.

Video review

Things included

In the box you will get:

• The pen display
• 65W USB-C charger with country plug
• 1.8m 3 to 2 cable with full-size HDMI
• 2x 1.8m USB-C to USB-C video cables
• Pen case
• 5x felt pen tips
• 5x plastic pen tips
• Huion PW60 pen
• Huion PW60S slim pen
• Artist glove (padded)
• Micro-fiber cleaning cloth
• Quick start guide
• Factory colour calibration report
• Huion K20 KeyDial Mini with USB-C to USB-A charging cable

The connection guide explains the two types of connections possible.

HDMI connection: Use of the 3-to-2 cable is needed. Full-size HDMI and USB-A (data) will go to your computer. The other USB-C goes to a power source. The other end with the two USB-C will go to the pen display.

USB-C connection: One USB-C cable will go to the computer with USB-C video port. The other USB-C will go to the power source. The pen display cannot be powered with one USB-C connection. Additional power is needed.

Kamvas Pro 19 support power pass-through and can charge your laptop with 40W. I did not see this feature on Kamvas Pro 27's product page.

This is the factory colour calibration report. sRGB average Delta E is 0.93. Anything less than 2 is good, and less than 1 is great.

Design

Design of the pen display looks clean and simple. Corners are rounded off, bezels are uniform. The display is actually 18.4-inch in size.

The back is matte textured metal with a 75 x 75mm VESA mount. If you want to get a VESA arm, get a strong one, or at least think of how you're gonna support this 2kg pen display while drawing.

If you want to get a laptop stand to prop up the display, make sure the latch is big enough to hold the bottom which is around 1cm thick. Using a laptop stand to elevate the display makes it more ergonomic for use as a standard desktop monitor when you're not drawing. A tablet or laptop stand is almost a must-buy if you're not getting the VESA arm.

The two fold-out feet has rubber padding with good grip on the table. The fold-out feet can only deploy at one height, about 20 degrees.

I had initially though those grilles beneath the feet are actually speakers but they are not. There are no speakers, and also no camera.

The power button and touchscreen on-off switch are located at the top right of the display. The pen display is just 2.14cm thick, and tapers towards the bottom.

The power button can be held down for 3s to show the OSD. Settings you can change are display mode, brightness, contrast, saturation, colour temperature, RGB and colour spaces (sRGB, AdobeRGB, DCI-P3, user, native). Certain settings may be locked depending on the display mode or colour space selected.

The OSD settings can only be adjusted with the pen and not finger.

These are the two USB-C video ports on the right side. There's also a 3.5mm audio jack here even though there are no speakers on this pen display. This recessed area and the one on the opposite side allows you to lift the pen display easily.

The USB-C ports are flushed to the flat side which means you can use any brand of USB-C video cable.

Display

Huion is using etched glass to create the matte surface which provides a nice tactile drawing experience.

The display is laminated so there's almost no gap between the line and the pen tip. And cursor is always directly beneath the pen tip regardless of how the pen is held. Cursor tracking at the edges is quite accurate too (after calibration).

The display also has anti-glare and it diffuses reflections well but still allows the colours beneath to show through. The glossy phone display is shown above for comparison.

Using a Spyder X2 Ultra colour calibrator, I measured colour support for 98% sRGB, 89% NTSC, 93% AdobeRGB and 88% P3 with a maximum brightness of 213 nits.

This display has the anti-sparkle feature and it does a good job at minimising colour noise and grain produced by matte surfaces.

However, this matte surface does make the visuals look slightly softer. It doesn't bother me that much, but this additional softness can definitely be seen even if you don't have another display by the side to compare with.

This is the downside that prevents this pen display from being perfect. People who are very particular about image quality of the display will be disappointed with this.

Huion currently has several touchscreen products, namely the Huion Kamvas Pro 17 and 27 pen displays, and the Huion Kamvas Studio 16 and Studio 24 pen computers.

Having a touchscreen can be convenient. Basic navigation finger gestures such as pan, zoom and rotate are supported in most drawing apps. This is where I will invite you to read the article I wrote on the state of touch support with drawing apps on Windows.

There is palm rejection but it does not work as well compared to iPad or Android tablets. Palm rejection works most of the time, but sometimes the palm may still activate some button from some palette on the right side.

Huion PW600 and PW600S pens

The sturdy pen case comes with Huion PW600 and PW600S pens, 5 felt pen tips and 5 plastic pen tips. The nib remover is located underneath the case.

The pens can be placed vertically on the case...

Or horizontally on top.

The Huion PW600 and PW600S pens supports PenTech 4, 16K levels of pressure sensitivity and tilt. The bigger pen has three customisable buttons and one eraser at the back. The smaller pen has one fewer side button.

These new pens are not compatible with older pen displays (those 2023 or older). And the older pens, e.g. PW550 or PW550S, are not compatible with the Kamvas Pro 19 and 27.

The rubber or silicone grip is fairly hard and has a smooth surface that does not attract dust. The pen is quite comfortable to hold.

Huion K20 KeyDial Mini

This is the Huion K20 KeyDial Mini with 20 hotkeys and a dial. The retail price is USD 69.99.

This is convenient and useful since there are no hotkeys on the pen display.

Driver

The drivers I've tested are Windows driver ver 15.7.6.1073 (29 Feb 2024) and Mac driver ver 15.6.6.17 (9 Jan 2024).

Mac and Windows driver have similar functionality except the latter has Windows Ink which you may have to enable or disable if pressure is not working as expected.

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

Here's where you can customise the pen pressure.

This is mapping of the working area to external displays.

The Huion K20 KeyDial Mini also uses the same driver.

Below are shortcuts you can set to the Huion K20 Keydial Mini:

• Keyboard shortcut
• Mouse: Left click, right click, middle click, double left click, wheel forward, wheel backward. With option for Ctrl, Alt, Shift, Win
• 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
• Settings preview: Show the shortcuts assigned
• Quick menu: Add 6 shortcuts to popup menu
• None

Quick Menu popup should appear beneath the pen tip but it may not depending on the app used. Once Quick Menu appears, you have the option to "Fix" it permanently at the location it appears at, or you can "Turn off" to make it disappear.

Here are some apps that I've tested that worked fine with the Quick Menu popup:

• Microsoft Edge
• Adobe Photoshop
• Clip Studio Paint
• Affinity Designer
• Photoshop
• Clip Studio Paint
• Medibang Paint
• Krita

Apps that do not work with Quick Menu popup

• Sketchable Plus
• Concepts
• Affinity Photo

Line tests

These line tests were created with Medibang Paint.

1. Initial activation force is minimal. Lines can be drawn by applying almost no pressure but if pen tip is in contact you can create a line. There's no noticeable diagonal line wobble or jitter.

2. Strokes can taper smoothly and sharply.

3. Line transition from thin to thick is smooth. Thin lines can still be drawn after thick lines, which is the true test of how sensitive a pen is when detecting minimal changes in pressure.

4. Consistent line width can be drawn easily by maintaining consistent pressure.

5. Dots can be drawn easily, and react to pressure.

6. Lines can be joined without leaving gaps or overshooting. There's no cursor misalignment or parallax.

The Huion PW600 and PW600S pens have similar excellent pressure sensitivity. Drawing performance is consistent and predictable.

I wasn't able to see the difference between PenTech 3 vs PenTech 4 with 8K vs 16K levels of pressure sensitivity.

Works fine with Sketchbook and Photoshop but not with Concepts app. Pressure sensitivity also doesn't work that well with Concept app but that's an issue with the app.

Drawing experience

Drawing experience is fantastic.

The two pens were installed with felt nibs and tactile drawing experience is smooth but not slippery on the matte surface. It's not exactly paper-like but you can still feel the texture. The felt nibs feel better on glass than plastic pen nibs that's for sure.

The matte surface does not attract much fingerprints and allows my hand to glide smoothly.

Being able to draw on such a big display is also a pleasant experience. 16-inch is good size for me. This 18.4-inch is larger but not too big. Visuals also look high resolution thanks to the 4K resolution, but as mentioned visual can be slightly softer due to the etched glass.

Drawing experience is very positive since the pen is so sensitive. Lines always come out exactly the way I expect them to.

Having a keyboard or using the Huion K20 KeyDial Mini is essential for a smooth workflow as I'm a heavy user of keyboard shortcuts. Actually I prefer to use the keyboard compared to the shortcut remote because I can access all keyboard shortcuts with a keyboard.

One thing that does affect drawing experience is having to hutch over for drawing which isn't ideal for long periods of time. Even with the fold-out feet, the display is still low on the tablet. I highly recommend you get a laptop stand.

Which laptop stand to get?

This one looks suitable.

Here are the features to look for:

• Base must be big so that it's stable
• Base must not rotate
• Support plate must be big so that the pen display is stable and won't fall off
• Support plate must be adjustable for angle
• Stand be must adjustable for height
• Hinge must look strong or stiff
• Latch must be big enough to hold the bottom of the pen display
• Bonus point if it come with a tool to tighten the hinge
• Must support at least 2kg weight

Issues

The issues below are not specific to the hardware but more on Windows.

10-point touch support does work?
To enable touch support, go to Windows Control Panel -> Tablet PC Settings -> Configure, and go through the setup.

Windows has its own set of gesture shortcuts. Drawing apps may have their own sets of gesture shortcuts. If the gestures are similar, there will be conflicts. To turn off Windows gestures, go to Settings > Bluetooth & Devices > Touchpad. There's also the Windows edge swipe shortcut for notification and widgets which requires more steps to disable so I just leave that as default.

Touch is not working on the Huion?
Go into Windows Control Panel -> Tablet PC Settings -> Display -> Configure -> Setup, then choose the display that can handle touch or pen.

Your computer audio is no longer audible?
Audio is lost when pen display is connected. You need to go into Windows Settings to switch audio output.

Conclusion

The Huion Kamvas Pro 19 is a beautiful well made pen display. Colour accuracy is great. Pen performance is excellent. Drawing experience is enjoyable. The 40W reverse charging for laptops is very convenient.

The main downside is visuals look slightly soft due to the matte surface. It's not a big deal for me but for some people it may be the deal breaker.

The other thing is getting a laptop stand is highly recommended to improve the ergonomics for drawing for long periods of time.

Pros and cons at a glance

+ Beautiful slim, compact design
+ Solid build quality
+ 4K resolution
+ Touchscreen
+ Good colour accuracy and brightness
+ Nice tactile drawing experience
+ Minimal colour noise or grain from the matte surface
+ Excellent pen performance
+ Two pens with different diameter included
+ Has foldout feet and VESA mount
+ 40W reverse charging for laptops
- Visuals look slightly soft
- Fold out feet only has one height
- No stand included
- OSD can only be controlled by pen and not finger
- Quick Menu popup does not appear beneath pen tip with certain apps
- Audio output will switch to Huion even though there are no speakers, but there's a 3.5mm audio jack

Availability

The Huion online store sells both Kamvas Pro 19 and Kamvas Pro 27.

These pen displays are also available on Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | ES | IT | JP)