Review: Huion HS610 Graphic Tablets – This works on Android

This review unit was provided by Huion for review purposes

I've been featured so many graphics drawing tablets on this blog and my Youtube channel that it's becoming difficult to differentiate them.

The Huion HS610 is a bit different from other drawing tablets I've reviewed so far. This tablet actually works with Android. You can connect this to your Android phone or tablet and draw straightaway. No driver installation needed. This is something new. More on that later.

These are the things included in the box

• Tablet
• Manual
• Battery-less pen and stand
• 8 replacement tip
• USB data cable
• Micro-USB to USB type A adapter
• Micro-USB to USB type C adapter

No driver disc is included so you have to download that yourself.

The inclusion of USB adapter allows you to use it with any phone or tablet that has a Micro-USB or USB C port, which is basically everything out there.

The design looks good and the build quality is solid. It feels like a well made tablet.

The active drawing area is 254 x 158.8mm (10 x 6.25in) when using this with a computer. With a phone, the active area is just a smaller portion of 158.8 x 99.2mm. This portion is a vertical rectangle on the left side closer to the physical buttons.

12 physical shortcut keys are included. You can customise these to specific keyboard shortcuts, mouse action, launch programs or switch display to let the cursor jump to another screen when you're using two monitors.

The physical buttons cannot be held down like the keyboard button to change brush size continuously. To increase a brush size by 10 points for example would require you to press the shortcut button 10 times, unlike just holding down the keyboard button.

There's a touch wheel that has been pre-configured to three functions, zoom, scroll and changing brush sizes. You can toggle between the functions using the button in the centre of the wheel. Unfortunately with the current Windows driver version 14.7.139.536 and Mac driver version 14.3.11, there's little to no customisation to change those function.

If you need even more shortcuts, there are 16 soft keys that you can access with the pen.

The L shape USB cable comes out from the left, slightly towards the top. If you're a left handed user, the cable will be at the bottom right, pointing downwards. In left handed mode, the row of soft keys will be at the bottom.

The pen included does not run on battery and hence does not require charging. This pen supports up to 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity and it supports tilt as well.

The pen is lightweight but solid. There's a huge rubber grip that's nice to hold. The whole pen feels pretty balanced in hand. The two side buttons are also customisable with the driver.

The pen stand included allows the pen to lay down horizontally or held vertically.

Eight replacement tips are hidden inside the pen stand. To access them, just twist and the pen stand would open up.

Drawing on Android

Being able to connect to an Android system (needs version 6 or newer) is an interesting feature.

I'm not sure of the exact use case of such a scenario, but if you do want to draw on an Android device with a tablet, now you can. No driver installation is required. It's plug and play. When the pen hovers over the active area, a cursor will appear on the screen.

Because there is no driver for Android, there's also no customisation for any of the shortcut buttons and pressure sensitivity. By default, thankfully the pressure sensitivity works well so the lack of customisation is not too bad.

Drawing tests

The line quality from the drawing apps on Windows and Mac are the same, so I've only included screenshots for Mac.

This is Photoshop. Pressure sensitivity works well. Lines can transition from thin to thick and back smoothly. Curves don't appear angular when turning and lines taper nicely. Tilt brushes work too.

Photoshop CC (Mac) is responsive but Photoshop CS5 (Mac) has slight lag, as in the line would come out bit by bit as if there's some input lag or the refresh rate lag. Photoshop CC (Windows) has lag

Pressure works fine with Clip Studio Paint.

Medibang Paint Pro also has no issues with the lines.

Conclusion

As a drawing tablet, it performs really well. I did not experience any glitches so this review was really easy to write.

Availability

You can find the Huion HS610 tablet via these affiliate links:

Huion web store | Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de | Amazon.fr | Amazon.it | Amazon.es | Amazon.co.jp