Review: Huion Kamvas Slate 10

Update 22 Jan 2024: Video review added.

Review unit provided by Huion

The Huion Kamvas Slate 10 is a 10.1-inch Android tablet with pen support. Official retail price is USD 249 and currently it's USD 229 on Amazon USA after a $20 off coupon.

This tablet joins the other two products from Huion's new pen computer category, the portable Kamvas Studio 16 (review) and desktop Kamvas Studio 24 which both runs Windows.

Video review

Specs

• Product model: KT1001
• CPU: Unisoc T616
• Graphics: Mali-G57
• RAM: 8GB LPDDR4x
• Storage: 128GB UFS2.2
• MicroSD card: Yes
• Wireless type: 802.11 b/g/n/ac
• Bluetooth: Bluetooth 5.0
• Camera front: 5.0MP / Rear: 13.0MP
• Speaker: Dual speaker
• Microphone: Dual microphone
• Sensor: L-sensor, Hall sensor, G-sensor
• Interface: USB-C 2.0, 3.5mm audio jack
• Panel size: 10.1 inch
• Resolution: 1920 x 1200 (16:10)
• LCD type: IPS LCD, 60Hz, laminated, glossy
• Active area: 216.57 x 135.36mm
• Contrast ratio: 1000:1
• Brightness: 260 cd/m2
• Response time: 25ms
• Viewing angle: 160°
• Gamut coverage: 65% NTSC, 90% sRGB, 66% Adobe RGB
• Display colour: 16.7M (8bit)
• Widevine L1
• Pressure levels: 4096 levels
• Accuracy: ±0.3mm (center), ±0.6mm (corner)
• Reading height: About 10mm
• Tilt recognition: ±60° (only)
• Touch support: 10 point finger
• Digital pen: HS200 active capacitive stylus
• Battery: 3.85V, 6000mAh
• Input voltage: DC 5V
• Stand: Leather case with stand function
• Operating system: Android 12.0
• Working temp. and humidity: 0-40°C, 20-80%
• Storage temp. and humidity: -20°C~60°C, 10-90%
• Dimension: 243 x 161 x 8.6 mm
• Net weight: 575g
• Color: Grey

The specs look alright for the USD 249 price point.

Speaking of price, this tablet competes with the 10.4-inch Samsung Tab S6 Lite (2022) and 11.6-inch PicassoTab XL. The Huion pen performance, as you shall see later, is between those two tablets.

Here's a comparison of the three tablets:

The Huion tablet may be more expensive than the Samsung Tab S6 Lite (2022) but you also get more RAM, internal storage and the case is included.

Things included

• Tablet
• Huion HS200 pen
• 1x replacement pen tip
• SIM ejection tool
• USB-A to USB-C charging cable
• USB-A charger
• Case
• User guide

The included case provides full protection for the tablet. There's even a pen holder and a flap that prevents the pen from dislodging. The tablet supports auto wake and sleep with the cover.

Shown above is one way to fold the case for drawing at an angle.

Design

Design of the tablet looks clean and simple. Corners are rounded off. Bezels are thick but not too thick. Build quality is solid.

You can tell this tablet was designed for landscape used with the camera on the long side, and power and volume buttons on the left.

Weight of the tablet at 575g is alright but once you add the case you can definitely feel the extra weight.

There's a front 5MP camera which cannot be used for face unlock. There's also no fingerprint unlock. Using pin or swipe code to unlock nowadays is considered inconvenient.

The back is matte textured metal and there's a 12MP camera.

The bottom has a speaker, USB-C port with USB 2 transfer speed, microSD card slot and a 3.5mm audio jack.

Transfer speed of the microSD card slot is 39 MB/s write and 80 MB/s read, tested with CPDT app using Sandisk Extreme Pro (200 MB/s read, 140 MB/s write).

The USB-C port cannot output video.

On the other side, there's a power button, volume control and another speaker.

Audio from the stereo speakers is loud enough for indoor use but not loud enough for outdoor use, so I wish it could be louder. Thankfully does not sound too hollow.

The pogo pin connector at the bottom is probably for a keyboard which is not available.

The display is a 10.1-inch IPS LCD with 1920 x 1200 resolution. Aspect ratio is 16:10. Visuals look sharp enough and pixelation is not really noticeable from one arm's distance away.

Advertised colour support is for 90% sRGB and 66% AdobeRGB. The colours look alright but not as vibrant as since it's not a 100% sRGB display. There's slight glow at the edges on both long edges but not too distracting.

Advertised brightness of 260 nits is bright enough for indoor use but not bright enough for outdoors. There's auto brightness but I find it to default to a brightness that's lower than what I prefer. It's said that the software will take some time to learn your preference to adjust the brightness.

The display is glossy and reflective. Screen protector is not provided and is sold separately by Huion for $10. This isn't really a pricy tablet so I personally won't get a screen protector for it, besides there's already a flip case included.

The display is laminated so there's almost no gap between the pen tip and the line. The pen tip is quite smooth on the display and will need some time to get used to.

Performance

The tablet uses the Unisoc T616 8-core processor from 2021 and comes with 8GB RAM and 128GB storage.

The mid-range Mali-G57 GPU can be used for light gaming but don't expect to play graphics intensive games at the highest settings or frame rates. In other words, this is not a gaming tablet.

Overall performance is smooth enough. Apps are able to launch fast enough. Switching between apps is quick. Webpages can download without delay.

Only issue with performance is when using the Youtube app, there's the occasional sudden split second lag, and the audio will not sync with the video, but the desync recovers a few seconds later. This problem does not happen when playing Youtube videos from the browser.

The read and write speeds of internal storage are around 680 MB/s and 340 MB/s as measured with CPDT app.

OS

The tablet runs on Android 12 and it's almost stock Android so there aren't many features. There's Google Play Store so you can always install your own launcher to get more features. I personally use Nova Launcher Prime which provides the home screen style you see above.

Some things I discovered with the OS:

• Vertical apps cannot rotate even when tablet is in landscape.
• Multi-app switcher does not show all the opened apps. You have to scroll sideways quite a bit.
• The default file browser from Google sucks. I use the Solid Explorer app instead.
• There's no bloatware except for the pre-installed Huion Note and HiPaint
• After updating the apps, total storage used is 5.8 GB out of 121 GB
• Tablet can be used as an external display by using SuperDisplay app
• There are many wallpapers included

Pen

This is the Huion HS200, an active capacitive stylus that uses USI 2.0 protocol and supports tilt, 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity and palm rejection. This is the same pen that works with certain Chromebook models and other USI-compliant devices.

Not sure if the pen's made with plastic or metal but build quality is solid. Weight is 15g. The surface is matte textured and diameter is thick enough for a comfortable grip.

The pen has two side buttons but functionality will vary depending on the apps used. The only app I know that supports 2 side button shortcuts is Infinite Painter.

The pen tip is considered firm but you can still see the pen tip move if you push hard enough. The pen tip can be pulled out easily with fingernails.

Only one replacement pen tip is included. Replacement pen tips are not available for sale on Huion online store yet. It's an USI pen so you can probably use pen tips from other USI pens, such as those made for Chromebooks. The pen tip glides quite smoothly on the display so it should not wear out that fast, unless you choose to put a matte screen protector on it.

The pen is powered by battery and has to be charged with the USB-C port by the side. I'm not a fan of battery powered pens because small batteries can be damaged quite easily if you don't use them often. I have several battery-powered pens that stopped working due to battery damage from inactive use.

The tablet does not have battery life indicator for the pen.

Drawing apps

There are many good drawing apps from the Google Play Store, namely:

• Concepts
• Infinite Painter
• Clip Studio Paint
• Krita
• Medibang Paint
• Sketchbook
• Tayasui Sketches
• Ibis Paint X
• HiPaint
• HeavyPaint

My favourite drawing apps are Concepts and Infinite Painter.

Line tests

.
Line test was done with Medibang Paint Pro.

1. Initial activation is low. There is slight jitter/wobble with slow diagonal lines.

2. Lines are able to taper smoothly and sharply with Medibang Paint, Clip Studio Paint, Ibis Paint X,

Lines taper with shoelace effect with Infinite Painter app (above), Sketchbook, Krita and Concepts. If you do not draw fast, there will be no shoelace effect. In other words, if you do hatching or cross hatching with those apps, you will see shoelace effect.

3. Line transition is smooth from thin to thick and back to thin. This is the true pressure sensitivity test. A truly sensitive pen can draw thin lines easily after drawing thick lines and the Huion pen is unable to do that. The pen has difficulty detecting minimal changes in pressure when drawing with minimal pressure.

This is not a tablet where you can choose a thick brush and just use that single brush by varying the pressure to get thin and thick lines easily. While you don't need to apply much pressure to get a line (low initiation activation force), the lines drawn with minimal pressure are still thicker than I expected.

4. Consistent line width can be created easily by maintaining consistent pressure. Note the diagonal line wobble.

5. Dots can be drawn easily.

6. There are no issues with cursor tracking. Cursor is always directly beneath the pen tip regardless of how the pen is held.

Drawing experience

Other than the slow diagonal line jitter, latency also affects drawing experience, and there is more latency on this tablet compared to other Huion pen displays.

The Huion Kamvas Slate 10 has a response time of 25ms which is longer than the 15ms found more commonly in pen displays. Response time is the time it takes for the monitor to register the pen's movement. All apps have latency and some have more latency. Concepts, one of my favourite apps, is still quite responsive for drawing. HiPaint has very noticeable latency to the point you won't feel like drawing.

Here's a quick sketch drawn with Concepts using the B4 watercolour brush. There is definitely slight jitter when drawing slow diagonal lines. For quick sketching, diagonal line jitter isn't really an issue for me.

This was also drawn with Concepts, using the Soft Pencil brush. The lines are quite smooth. This particular brush doesn't seem to be affected by diagonal line jitter.

This was drawn with Concepts while outdoors. I tried to use tilt to get thicker lines to fill colours faster but tilt does not work consistently. Concepts, by the way, is a very forgiving app so even if you don't have the best pen, your lines can still look good.

This was drawn with Infinite Painter and some of the lines have jitter. You'll have to add smoothness (and latency as a result) to the brushes for the lines to look smoother.

Clip Studio Paint works quite well even without line stabilisation. There is slight jitter with diagonal lines but it's not really noticeable. Clip Studio Paint is best used with Simple Mode with minimal UI elements that take up space on the screen.

The tablet can be used for taking notes and can capture my handwriting quite accurately. However the experience will be better if response time is faster, latency is lower.

Cursor visibility will depend on the drawing app used. By default, there's no visible cursor but some apps allow you to show the cursor, but some apps will just show a cursor or cross and not show the cursor brush shape. There's cursor hover with Medibang (circle), CSP and Krita.

Krita is not ideal for use on this tablet due to the UI clutter. If you want to use Krita, you'll have to spend some time to customise your UI.

Battery life

Battery capacity is 6000 mAh. For a tablet that's quite thick, I was actually expecting the battery capacity to be higher than the Samsung Tab S6 Lite's 7040 mAh.

Battery life is around 5-6 hours depending on the brightness.

A full charge will take 3 hours which is quite long so this tablet is best charged overnight. For some reason, the charging speed is slower when connected to a high powered charger than a low powered charger.

Issues

Occasionally while drawing, the line may not appear in the first split second. It doesn't happen that often but it's quite annoying when it does.

When playing videos with the Youtube app, the video would skip a bit and audio will not sync perfectly, but it goes back to normal sync after a few seconds. It happens less often when playing Youtube videos using the web browser but I prefer to use the Youtube app. This issue with the Youtube app is quite annoying.

Conclusion

The Huion Kamvas Slate 10 has decent specs for the price of USD 249. General performance is smooth. Design looks good enough to me and build quality is solid.

This tablet looks and feels like white label product that's made by one company and sold under other brands. It kinda reminds me of the early days where pen displays from Huion, XPPen and other companies all kinda look similar. I don't have any issues with white label products though as long as they work.

Drawing performance is affected by slight jitter with slow diagonal lines which means the pen is not good enough for creating artworks that require accuracy.

The other thing that affects drawing experience is pressure sensitivity. Even though the pen is said to support 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity, the pen isn't that accurate at detecting minimal changes in pressure when when drawing with minimal pressure.

Main thing to know to know is some drawing apps will perform better than others. The apps that work well on this tablet are Concepts, Medibang Paint, Infinite Painter (with line stabilisation) and Clip Studio Paint.

The number of portable tablets with pen support under USD 300 is limited, and as far as I know none are good enough for professional illustration. If you want better pen performance and drawing experience, you will have to go with pen displays, but those are not portable. E.g Huion Kamvas 13 (2020) is just USD 209 at the time of this review, and the Ugee U1600 is just USD 159 on Amazon USA after a $100 off coupon.

For budget tablets for drawing purposes, currently it comes down to the Huion Kamvas Slate 10 and the Samsung Tab S6 Lite. The Huion tablet has more RAM and storage, Samsung tablet has better pen performance.

Huion markets this tablet for kids and beginners and that is the correct target audience. The tablet is good enough for casual drawing, sketching but not for professional work. Kids and beginners probably won't have much to complain about with a brand new tablet in hand.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Solid build quality
+ Clean and simple design
+ There's auto brightness
+ Overall smooth performance
+ MicroSD card slot included
+ Sharp resolution for a 10.1-inch display
+ Display colours look alright for the price
+ Laminated display
+ Pen included
+ Case included
+ Decent quality stereo speakers
+ No bloatware
+ Affordable price for a tablet with pen support
- No biometric unlock
- Stock Android has limited features
- Slow 3.5 hours charging speed
- USB-C port with USB 2 transfer speed
- Pen is powered by battery
- Pen has no battery life indicator
- Replacement pen tips not available yet on Huion store
- Slight jitter and wobble with slow diagonal lines
- Videos from the Youtube app will occasionally skip and audio will desync

Availability

The Huion Kamvas Slate 10 is available from Huion online store and Amazon USA.

If you intend to buy this tablet, consider using the affiliate link to support my blog. I get to earn some commission at no extra cost to you.