Review: Veikk VK2200 pen display

Veikk VK2200 is the largest pen display from Veikk's lineup. The smaller ones are the Veikk VK1560 and Veikk VK1560 Pro.

The main selling point is the large 21.5-inch laminated screen and the battery-free pen that supports tilt and 8192 levels of pressure sensitivity.

Official retail price, last seen on Amazon, is US $379. By the way, the VK1560 Pro that I reviewed earlier has the same retail price surprisingly, so it's more worth the money to go for the larger display unless your table doesn't have the space.

By the way, this review is made possible thanks to Veikk for the sponsored review unit.

All the items were packed securely inside the box with thick foam.

These are the things included:

• Pen display
• Power brick and cable
• HDMI cable
• USB data cable
• mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter
• 2x pens
• 2x felt pen case
• 2x charging cables for the pens
• Pen stand
• Nib remover and many replacement nibs
• User manual and driver download card
• Micro-fiber cleaning cloth
• 2x artist glove

Specifications

• Display Area: 21.5 inch
• Resolution: 1920 x 1080
• Battery-free pen
• Pressure sensitivity: 8192
• Tilt sensitivity: Yes
• Resolution: 5080LPI
• Read Speed: 250 point/s
• Reading Distance: 15mm
• Contrast ratio: 1000:1
• Colour gamut: 92% NTSC
• Colour support: 16.7 million

Full-size HDMI to full-size HDMI cable.

Mini DisplayPort cable to full-size HDMI

One thing good about Veikk is they are generous with the accessories. I didn't even bother to count the many replacement nibs included.

Two sets of pen, felt pen case and pen charging cable are included.

This pen is powered by battery so you'll need to charge it when it runs out of battery life. The good news is you can have both pens charged up, so even if you run out of battery life, you still have a backup pen to work with. And if your pen is spoiled, you still have a pen to work with while you wait for your replacement pen.

The pen has a matte surface body that's nice to hold. Build quality is solid. Weight is heavier towards the back maybe because the battery is there? Anyway, it's just slightly heavier at the back so it's easy to get used to.

You can twist open the pen stand to reveal even more replacement nibs.

Design of the pen display looks good. Bezels are almost uniform throughout except for the extra chin at the bottom.The black and gray colour combination and rounded corners look good.

This is a 21.5-inch IPS panel that supports a resolution of 1920 x 1080. 1080P does give you big pixels on a 21.5-inch display but the upside is all the user interface elements are big and easy to read and click.

This is a laminated display which means there should be no gap between the drawing surface and the actual screen beneath. But I do see a gap but it's a really a tiny gap so it's just a minor quibble from me. The main takeaway point for the display is, it looks good, feels solid and premium (from the front).

The pen display is quite thin. It's almost as thick as the pen included. Don't mistake this for a tablet even though it's thin. It's a monitor so you still have to connect this to a computer and power source. The VK2200 actually draws more power compared to the smaller pen display that's why the power brick is included.

There are 6 customisable touch shortcuts on the left.

These are the touch shortcuts for the OSD menu.

To access the OSD menu, you have to press and hold the touch shortcuts for a few seconds. After you're done with the menu, it automatically locks the shortcuts again. This locking function is a feature that prevents accidental touches and it works brilliantly. I've lost count at how many times my hand would touch those top right shortcuts when I'm trying to click on something with the pen.

The OSD menu allows adjustment for settings such as brightness, backlight, contrast, hue, saturation, gamma, sharpness and colour temperature.

Out of the box, the colours should look good. If you want accurate colours, you'll need to use a colour calibrator to calibrate the display. I measured 95% sRGB and 82% AdobeRGB support. This is not an easy display to calibrate because there are so many colour attributes you can adjust with the OSD menu. I actually had to calibrate the display several times to get the maximum possible colour support.

Maximum brightness is measured at 200 nits which is more than adequate for indoor use.

There's no High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) so you won't be able to watch certain protected content.

There's no matte screen protector applied. That anti-glare matte screen coating is actually the glass surface. The matte screen coating does affect sharpness slightly but it's a good compromise because the tactile experience while drawing with the pen on this surface feels great. And since it's glass, it's less likely to scratch. Downside is it can attract finger prints quite easily. So you may want to wear the artist glove provided while drawing.

The stand is built in.

I'm not sure if this can be VESA mounted. There are four holes on the back that look like VESA mount holes but I don't see any screw threads. The holes are 7.5cm apart.

For some reason, the bottom rubber feet can be adjusted too. But you'll want to have that rubber feet on the tablet at all times for the grip. Otherwise, it will be the bottom chin of the display on the table.

This is the lowest angle the display can go. The highest angle is almost vertical but it may topple to the front.

It's a comfortable angle to work with.

That thing there is for cable management. You can remove that to run the cables through it.

The cables all connect to the right side of the display.

That cable management is another smart design.

Driver

The driver I've used are Windows driver version 2.0.0.3 and Mac driver 2.0.0.6 downloaded on 9 Jan 2020. The driver is the same as VK1560 Pro so I've reused relevant screenshots here.

Driver functionality for Windows and Mac is pretty similar so I'll just show you the Windows driver.

The pressure sensitivity can be adjusted by adjusting the pressure curve. Great.

The two side buttons can be customised to mouse clicks or keyboard shortcuts.

Here's where left handers can rotate the display 180 degrees.

Note the Enable Windows Ink Function. You have to enable Windows Ink for pressure sensitivity to work in Photoshop, and disable for Medibang to perform without glitches. When Windows Ink is enabled, you won't be able to select text with the cursor of the pen – you have to use the mouse cursor for text select. MacOS users don't have issues here.

To calibrate the screen to remove misalignment, you have to enable extended display mode first.

When I tried to calibrate with the Veikk as the one and only display, an error dialogue box appears to tell me to use extended display mode. I'm able to use dual screens here because I'm connected to a laptop. I'm not sure if you can calibrate if the Veikk is your only display.

I noticed there's misalignment by default -- cursor is not directly beneath the pen tip. That's weird because this is a laminated display so there shouldn't be any misalignment to begin. Anyway, the calibration works and the cursor will be adjusted to directly beneath the pen tip.

Unfortunately for MacOS users, the driver is not able to remember the calibration after computer restarts. That means there's always misalignment, and it's tedious to calibrate it each time you restart. Hopefully a driver update can solve this problem.

Here's where you can customise the physical shortcut buttons. You can input whatever keyboard shortcuts you want.

These are some predefined shortcut functionality you may find useful.

• Accurate Mode makes the cursor move slower so that you can draw more accurately.
• Pen/Erase toggle. You know that.
• Monitor switch allows the cursor to jump from one screen to the other in extended monitor mode.
• Dial Function Switch allows you to switch the dial's functionality

On MacOS, you can find the driver inside System Preferences. In Windows, the driver is located on the task bar and somewhere on the Window Start menu.

If you're using MacOS Mojave, you need to give permissions to the driver. Otherwise, you can move the cursor but you can't click anything. There are MacOS Mojave driver install instructions provided on Veikk's website.

If there's already a tick in the checkbox beside TabletDriverCenter, and cursor still can't click, untick and tick that checkbox again.

Drawing performance

Drawing performance on Windows is excellent for the most part. If there are glitches with the lines, eg pressure not working, you may have to toggle Windows Ink on/off with the driver settings.

Lines in Windows are smooth, taper well, and can maintain consistent pressure. Initial activation force is minimal so drawing really thin lines is easy.

Drawing performance in MacOS is affected by a less sensitive pen, most noticeably in Photoshop. I wasn't able to get the same pressure variation possible with Windows. Adjusting the pressure curve with the Mac driver does not work. Tilt sensitivity does not work with MacOS but works with Windows.

Photoshop CC 2020 (Win) works fine. Make sure to turn on Windows Ink to get pressure sensitivity. Text outside of drawing software won't be selected by dragging the cursor with the pen. Text inside the drawing software, eg text boxes, can still be selected with the pen.

When drawing with light pressure, the line always appear thicker than I want. There's pressure sensitivity, but the line variation isn't as wide compared to what you can get with Windows. This problem seems to affect Photoshop more than the other drawing software I've tested on MacOS.

Illustrator (Win) works great.

Windows Ink needs to be turned off for Medibang Paint Pro (Win) to work properly. When Windows Ink is on, lines sometimes can have stray strokes, and the first 1 second that you draw will not show, in other words, there will be a gap right before your line appears.

Clip Studio Paint (Win) works great.

These are settings required for Clip Studio Paint (Win) to work well.

Affinity Photo (Win) works great.

Krita (Win) works great. There's tilt sensitivity also but somehow this feature wasn't advertised on Veikk's website.

In Photoshop (Mac) If you look close, sometimes you can see jitter, especially when you're drawing at 100% zoom.

In Photoshop (Mac) is where you can see the line variation is not as wide compared to Windows. With Windows, it's easy to draw really thin lines and have them really thick. In Photoshop (Mac), the line variation is limited.

So if you want thin lines, you have to adjust your brush size small. With Windows, you can use a big brush but still draw thin lines by using light pressure.

Lines in Photoshop (Mac) also don't seem to taper as nicely.

Illustrator (Mac) works great.

Medibang Paint Pro (Mac) performs better. Thin/thick line variation is better and the lines can taper more gradually. Drawing dots requires dragging the pen slightly. You can't just tap on the display. This issue only happens with Medibang Paint Pro. With other software on Mac, you can tap to get dots easily.

Clip Studio Paint (Mac) could have better thin/thick line variation.

Krita (Mac) has good line variation but there's slight jitter when drawing slowly at 100%. You can zoom in to draw smoother lines.

Affinity Photo (Mac) could have better thin/thick line variation also.

Conclusion

Veikk VK2200 is a beautiful pen display performs way better on Windows than on MacOS. The hardware is fine so it's probably the driver that's causing all the issues on MacOS. For MacOS users, let's hope there's a driver update in the future that will solve the problems.

At the time of this review, I can recommend this easily to Windows user. Drawing performance is fantastic and the lines comes out predictably. For the price of US $379, it's worth the money.

Do check out more reviews on Amazon, links below. Maybe those problems are specific to my system. Who knows.

Pros and cons at a glance

+ Good build quality and design
+ Pen is quite sensitive on Windows
+ Supports tilt and 8192 levels of pressure sensitivity
+ Many replacement tips included
+ 6 customisable touch shortcuts
+ Laminated display
+ Screen has good colour accuracy
+ Matte anti-glare drawing surface that's not a screen protector
+ OSD menu has many colour calibration options
+ Does not heat up and can be used for long periods of time without discomfort
+ Drawing performance is good on Windows
+ HDMI-miniDisplay port adaptor included
+ Built in stand
+ Very competitive price
- Driver on MacOS has issues with misalignment calibration, pressure sensitivity, tilt sensitivity
- Pen requires charging, but two pens included
- Difficult to colour calibrate
? Not VESA mountable

Availability

Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.co.jp | Gearbest