Review: Huion Kamvas Slate 11 and 13 Android tablets

Review units provided by Huion

Huion has just launched two new Android tablets in April 2025 called the Kamvas Slate 11 and Kamvas Slate 13. These are follow-up models to the Huion Kamvas Slate 10 launched in January 2024.

Prices are USD 299 and USD 459 for the 11-inch and 13-inch at the time of this review.

Bottom line

The included pen is called H-Pencil and there's no mention of the technology used except it's an active capacity stylus. Diagonal lines from the pen have wobble, initial activation force is high and palm rejection doesn't work consistently. Drawing with accuracy is extremely challenging. This tablet is still usable for casual drawing or sketching, and for users who are not too discerning, e.g. children who would be happy regardless of which tablet they get.

The pen performance is good enough for note taking and handwriting, but palm rejection affects the experience.

Overall tablet performance is smooth and able to keep up with the drawing apps, or multiple apps.

The matte glass and 90Hz refresh rate are good features to have.

Specifications

Shown below are the specifications of the three Kamvas Slate tablets Huion is currently selling.

Things included

• Tablet
• Flip case
• Huion H-Pencil
• 3x replacement pen tips
• Artist glove
• SIM ejector
• USB-A to USB-C charging cable

The flip case comes with a pen holder within and supports auto-wake.

The flip case can prop up the tablet for a more comfortable angle for drawing. There will be slight movement, but still stable enough for drawing.

Design

Design of the tablets look clean and simple. Bezels are thin. Corners for the body and LCD are rounded off. Build quality is solid.

Kamvas Slate 11 has a 10.95-inch display and the size is slightly larger than an A5 size sketchbook. Kamvas Slate 13 has a 12.7-inch display and is huge.

Which size to get depends on whether you prefer portability, and what you intend to use the tablet for.

Kamvas Slate 11 is more compact and portable, lighter at 500g, and easier to handle with one hand. Kamvas Slate 13 is a table-top tablet that requires setting it on a table, or a tablet stand. The big size is unwieldy to handle with comfort, and the weight of 682g is heavy.

The Kamvas Slate 13 has noticeably more space for drawing thanks to the larger size, and also the 4:3 vs 16:10 aspect ratio.

Some advantages of the bigger display are:

• Split screen mode can be used more effectively
• Photo reference can place on your canvas and there's still good amount of space for drawing
• 12.7-inch works great as an external display using wireless display apps
• Works well with drawing apps with lots of UI elements, e.g. Krita, CSP, Medibang

Both tablets have four speakers. Kamvas Slate 11 has more clarity in the treble and for voice. Kamvas Slate 13 sounds slightly hollow by comparison.

Both tablets have a rear 13MP camera and a front landscape 8MP camera. Both tablets have no biometric unlock so there's no face and fingerprint unlock.

Both tablets have a microSD card slot for storage expansion.

Display

Both tablets are said to support 99% sRGB but from what I can see with my review units, the Kamvas Slate 13 has more vibrant colours and better contrast. Highlights on the Kamvas Slate 11 are easy to blowout (see the clouds), and colours don't appear as rich (see the ocean). I'm not sure if it's a hardware issue with the Kamvas Slate 11 review unit, or if this is just what it is.

There are no colour settings to tweak in the Android settings -- there's a page for colour settings but no options to change.

Kamvas Slate 11 and 13 have pixel density of 206 and 212 PPI respectively. Visuals are quite sharp with no noticeable pixelation from one arm distance away.

Both displays are laminated so there's almost no gap between the line and the pen tip.

Both tablets have a matte glass surface instead of matte screen protector. The matte glass surface provides a subtle tactile drawing experience but is still considered quite smooth, but not too slippery. The surface texture is actually quite similar to the many of the Android tablets with matte glass displays, such as the Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro and Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2. The pen tip can glide quite smoothly on the surface which is good for writing but not as good for drawing because when drawing you may want to draw more slowly for accuracy. Controlling the pen on such smooth surface needs time to get used to.

The matte glass surface is great for reading. And the Kamvas Slate 13 is so big it can display two comic pages side by side and the text is still big enough.

This is how the matte glass diffuses reflections, in this case a horizontal light.

Anti-glare of the matte glass looks alright as long as you're working under shade or indoors.

Brightness is advertised to be 350 nits and looks high enough, and auto-brightness works well. Just try not to cover the auto-brightness sensor with your drawing hand as that will make the display dim.

Performance

The tablet comes with 8GB RAM and the MediaTek Helio G99 (MT6789V/CD), an 8-core chipset released in 2022. Overall performance seems smooth enough and there are no issues with multi-tasking or running drawing apps.

The Kamvas Slate 11 looks like it has smoother performance probably due to the 90Hz refresh rate vs the 60Hz on the Kamvas Slate 13.

The tablets can be used for light gaming but don't expect to play games at the highest graphics settings.

OS and software

The tablet runs on Android OS 14 and the UI does not provide many features. There's no tap to wake, no lift to wake and no double tap to sleep.

There is Google Play Store so if you need more features and customisation, you can always install your own launcher.

I would have preferred a grid view compared to having to slide pass so many apps to get to the app I want.

I don't see any bloatware. The pre-installed drawing apps are HiPaint, IbisPaintX and Clip Studio Paint.

The user interface of CSP on the smaller tablet is quite different from the bigger tablet.

Are these the Simple and Studio mode of CSP phone app? They are certainly not the Simple and Studio mode of the desktop version.

Pen

The Huion H-Pencil supports tilt and 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity. The pen is powered by a built-in battery and charging is through the USB-C port. The pen does not use Bluetooth for connection.

There's no mention of pen technology but it's definitely not Wacom EMR or Microsoft Pen Protocol (MPP). Pen tech could be USI but I do not have another USI pen to test. That's to say that if you lose the pen, you may have to buy a replacement pen from Huion.

Three replacement pen tips were provided even though only one is said to be included on the product page.

There is one side button which may be customisable depending on the app used. The pen tip has slight movement when in contact with the drawing surface, but otherwise can be considered quite firm.

Line tests

Line tests below were created with Medibang Paint Pro.

1. Initial activation force is high. When drawing with minimal pressure, such as with the pen tip glancing the pen tip, there won't be any lines. When you press down just enough to get a line, it is difficult to maintain an unbroken line, which is why you see many broken lines in test #1.

There is wobble and jitter with slowly drawn diagonal lines. Line stablisation has to be set very high to remove the diagonal line wobble, and at those settings latency is very obvious.

2. Lines are able to taper smoothly and sharply.

3. Line transition from thin to thick is smooth enough. However it's difficult to transition back to thin lines after thick lines, and when you apply minimal pressure the line will just break due to the high initial activation force (which requires you to press harder).

4. Consistent line width can be maintained by applying consistent pressure, but it's difficult to draw thin lines.

5. No issues with drawing the dots, except most dots are big. It's not easy to get smaller dots by applying light pressure.

6. There aren't major issues with joining lines without gaps or with lines overshooting. Diagonal lines have noticeable wobble and jitter.

Tilt works without much issues, thankfully.

There's the usual amount of latency when drawing. Latency is definitely more noticeable compared to the Apple iPads and Samsung tablets. The amount of latency will also vary depending on the drawing app used, and Medibang Paint (above) has very noticeable latency whereas Concepts app has better latency performance.

Drawing performance

Since the pen performance isn't great, drawing experience isn't ideal with most drawing apps.

Palm rejection does not work well. There a tendency for the tablet to pick up double finger tap (or a finger + palm) to activate double-finger undo gestures. While drawing, unintentional undos would happen often and that's quite annoying. Sometimes the canvas may also move due to the two-finger pan gesture.

Wearing the included artist glove is almost a must to get palm rejection to work properly. If you don't want to wear the artist glove, you'll have to disable certain finger gestures.

The pen has wobble and jitter with slowly drawn diagonal lines so that affects accuracy. The workaround to get smoother lines is to draw faster. But sometimes you want to draw slower to draw more accurately, but with this tablet it's not possible to have it both ways, e.g. draw slow and draw accurately.

This was drawn with Infinite Painter and drawing experience is not good because this app really needs a pen with good performance. Due to the issue with high initial activation force, it's not easy to draw lines with line width variation. As such, most lines will have rather consistent line width rather than obvious thin and thick strokes.

This was also drawn with Infinite Painter. I also find it quite difficult to place the lines accurately, and there's also the issue with diagonal line wobble.

This was drawn with Medibang Paint Pro and performance is slightly better. This app is more usable compared to Infinite Painter on this tablet with the pen.

This was also drawn with Medibang Paint Pro. It's still not easy to create line variation. To draw thinner lines, I have to manually adjust the brush size. By using a textured brush, the diagonal line wobble is not as obvious.

The three sketches above were drawn with Concepts which is an app that is very forgiving even if the pen does not perform well. For these sketches I used the Soft Pencil brush and did not have to worry about line variation. I was able to get the lines to appear quite smoothly without noticeable diagonal line wobble.

Handwriting performance is alright except for palm rejection that does not work well.

Battery life

Battery life for both tablets is decent. I'll need to do more testing to provide a more accurate assessment.

Conclusion

The hardware for both Kamvas Slate 11 and 13 is actually alright, except for there isn't biometic unlock which would be really convenient.

The pen performance isn't ideal though, and palm rejection not working consistently is a bummer. As a result, these tablets won't be good enough for professional artists. These tablets are targeted at beginners and kids who are not going to be as discerning and would probably be happy with any tablet.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Design looks good
+ Matte glass
+ 8GB RAM
+ Has Google Play Store
+ Android 14
+ No bloatware
+ Has microSD card slot
+ Performance is smooth
+ Kamvas Slate 11 has 90Hz refresh rate
+ Kamvas Slate 13 has 4:3 aspect ratio
- Diagonal lines suffer from wobble and jitter
- Palm rejection does not work well
- High initial activation force
- No biometric unlock
- Kamvas Slate 13 audio sounds more hollow
- Kamvas Slate 11 colour and contrast not as good

Availability

Kamvas Slate 11 and Kamvas Slate 13 are available from the Huion online store.