Review: XPPen Artist Pro 24 (Gen 2) 4K pen display

Review unit provided by XPPen

XPPen released two new Artist Pro 24 (gen 2) pen displays in October 2024. One has 4K UHD resolution at 60Hz refresh rate and the other has 2.5K resolution at 165Hz refresh rate. Prices are USD 1299 and USD 1099 respectively. There's a promotion (as usual) so the prices are 15% lower at USD 1104.99 and USD 934.99.

These are the prices for the Gen 2 pen displays at the time of review:

• XPPen Artist Pro 24 (Gen 2) 4K - USD 1104.99
• XPPen Artist Pro 24 (Gen 2) 165Hz - USD 934.99
• XPPen Artist Pro 19 (Gen 2) 4K (review) - USD 809.99
• XPPen Artist Pro 16 (Gen 2) 2.5K (review)- USD 509.99
• XPPen Artist Pro 14 (Gen 2) (review) - USD 335.99

Bottom line

The XPPen Artist Pro 24 (Gen 2) 4K pen display looks good and works great. Pen performance is excellent and better than the other Gen 2 series pen displays I've tested, namely the 14, 16 and 19.

The big display provides plenty of space for multi-tasking and drawing.

While I don't have the 1440P 165Hz model to test, I did watch a video review (8:43 mark) by Tyler Edlin that shows the same amount of latency as the 4K 60Hz model.

So if pen latency is the same, then the selling point of 165Hz is more for gaming and the smoother OS animations (e.g. scrolling, moving things around, pan, zoom and rotate). And you get to save almost USD 200 which is significant.

Video review

Specifications

Things included

• Pen display
• 60W power adapter with barrel port
• 2x power cable (plugs may vary)
• DisplayPort cable
• HDMI cable
• USB-C video cable
• USB-A to USB-C data cable
• 2x pen holders
• Pen case
• 14x pen tips for slim pen
• 10x pen tips for thicker pen
• 4x felt tips for thicker pen
• X3 Pro Slim Stylus (PD51)
• X3 Pro Smart Chip Stylus (PD21)
• Bluetooth USB-A receiver for remote
• XPPen ACK05 shortcut remote
• Cover for back of pen display
• Micro fiber cleaning cloth
• Artist glove
• User manual
• Warranty card
• Colour calibration report

Design

This is a huge pen display so you will need a big table for it.

The total weight with the stand is 7.3kg. If you want to mount this on a VESA arm (10 x 10cm), make sure the arm can support the weight.

The design looks clean and simple. Build quality is solid. Corners are rounded off. Bezels are perhaps too thick, three fingers wide.

Here are some advantages for a big pen display:

• You can view your work at almost 100% size. The height is almost full A4 paper's height
• Multi-tasking with multiple windows. There's space to place references by the side
• There's more space for drawing with big arm movement
• The sharpess and display size allows you to see details easily

The pen display comes with the ACS02 stand already installed. The stand is made with metal and build quality is solid. There are rubber feet beneath the pen display and stand with amazing grip on the table. The stand is very stable thanks to the grip and also the weight of the pen display.

Angle of the stand can be adjusted easily with the latch. Use two hands for better adjustment because the pen display is heavy. Shown above is the lowest angle for the stand.

The highest angle is not perfectly vertical, but vertical enough.

Ports on the back are 3.5mm audio jack, HDMI, DisplayPort, USB-C and power. There are some extruded plastic parts for cable management. The cables can be covered with the included cover.

The two pen holders (one plastic and one silicone) can be installed on top of the pen display.

And also at the top you'll find buttons for power, brightness and input source.

The display is laminated but the glass seems to have more thickness than I expected. If you look from the side (shown above), you can see a tiny gap between the cursor and the pen tip. From the front, the parallax is not noticeable thankfully.

Display and visual quality

Having a pen display that's colour calibrated at the factory is great because not many people actually have colour calibrators.

The colour report mentions sRGB average Delta E of 0.18 which is fantastic. Average Delta E is the variance between the input colour and measured output colour. Anything less than 2 is good, less than 1 is great.

For this pen display, XPPen has introduced a new X-Color Master colour management workflow that's developed together with Calman. XPPen has also created a new software called XPPen ColorMaster to let users colour calibrate the pen display.

The listed colorimeter that can work with the software are:

• Portrait Displays: C6 HDR2000, C6 HDR5000
• X-Rite: i1Display Pro/Plus
• Klein Instruments: K10
• Calibrite: ColorChecker Display Pro/Plus (HL)

I don't have those colour calibrators so I use my own which is the Spyder X2. That's the colour calibrator I use to match colours across all the tests that I have and test.

After colour calibration, I measured 100% sRGB, 95% NTSC, 97% AdobeRGB, 98% P3 and a maximum brightness of 216 nits.

This is a rather colour accurate pen display and 97% AdobeRGB is impressive.

218 nits maximum brightness is lower than the advertised 300 nits but that's not surprising as real world brightness is usually 10 - 20% lower. The brightness is high enough for me since my usage is usually around 150 to 200 nits.

Anti-glare of the matte glass surface is not that aggressive. Diffused reflections are not that glaring and the display has enough brightness to go through diffused reflections.

Viewing angle is good affected by just the matte surface.

And since the surface is matte glass, it is very unlikely for the pen tip to scratch the surface.

All matte textured surfaces will introduce some grain, colour noise or anti-glare sparkle. All that is kept to a minimal on this pen display. However there is some softness to the visual which is not surprising. From one arm's distance away, all the visual still look sharp enough (thanks to the 4K UHD resolution) and I certainly do not have any issues with the sharpness.

Nice thing about having a big 24-inch pen display with 4K UHD resolution is, there's more leeway for adjusting the UI scaling. If you prefer larger UI elements, you can use the 1080P workspace with the sharpness of 4K

Or you can reduce the UI elements to show more content on the display, which is good for multi-tasking, eg. split screen, or using many windows.

Connection

The pen display requires a dedicated power source since it's a huge display to power.

For video connection, you can use HDMI, DisplayPort or USB-C video.

For HDMI and DisplayPort connections, you'll also need to connect the pen display with a USB cable to your computer to get the pen to work.

For USB-C video connection, you get video and data, and the other cable is the power cable.

One feature I wish was included is Power Delivery. Right now even with the pen display connected to power, the pen display cannot charge connected devices.

Driver

There are drivers for Windows, Mac and Linux from XPPen's download page.

The XPPen driver for MacOS does not load automatically upon startup after installation. So you'll have to manually set it to launch on startup (right click the app on the dock and enable "Open at Login").

The driver is quite simple since there are no hotkeys to customise.

The drawing or mapping area can be left as default most of the time.

The pen display has no OSD menu for display settings so you can only adjust the display from the driver. Settings you can adjust include colour space, brightness, contrast, RGB and colour temperature.

Pen pressure can be customised by moving the three control points around, or you can choose from the pre-programmed pressure curves.

The pen's side button can be customised. I usually set one pen button to Switch Display for my dual display setup and it works well.

The XPPen ACK05 shortcut remote also uses the same driver.

All configured settings can be backed up.

For some reason, Windows driver version 4.0.5 and 4.0.6 do not have the calibration button. 4.0.4 has that. Weird.

Pen

The two pens included are the X3 Pro Slim Stylus (PD51) and X3 Pro Smart Chip Stylus (PD21).

The pens support tilt and 16K levels of pressure sensitivity. The pens are not battery powered so no charging is required.

The pen tips have slight movement when in contact with the drawing surface, but to me they feel quite firm when drawing.

The thicker pen has a silicone grip and is comfortable to hold. There are two side buttons and an eraser. Interestingly, XPPen did not included the X3 Pro Roller Stylus (USD 49) that was included with the XPPen Artist Pro 19 (Gen 2).

The slim pen has removable buttons and you can cover it with a plate that has no buttons.

The pen case is well made and solid. There are some replacement felt nibs that you can try with the thicker pen.

I highly recommend buying more felt nibs (USD 15 for 20 pieces) because they provide more tactile drawing experience than the standard plastic pen tips.

Line tests

These are line tests created with Medibang Paint Pro on MacOS.

1. Initial activation force is very low and thin lines can be drawn easily even with a thick brush selected. There's no wobble or jitter with slow diagonal lines.

2. Lines can taper smoothly and sharply.

3. Line transition from thin to thick and back is smooth.

4. Line width can be maintained consistently by maintaining consistent line width.

5. Dots can be drawn

6. There are no issues with cursor misalignment. I could join separate lines without leaving gaps or overshooting.

There's no mention of response time on the website. From what I can see, the amount of latency is typical of most pen displays I've tested.

The pen is sensitive and accurate. Performance is consistent and predictable.

Interestingly, the pen performance here is more accurate than what you can get from the XPPen Artist Pro 14, 16 and 19 even though they are all from the Gen 2 pen display series. There's no diagonal line wobble and jitter at all.

Drawing experience

I've not used such a big pen display for a long time that it feels weird drawing on one.

I tend to draw small, so now on a big display, I actually have to draw longer lines. I even have to stretch my hand to because the colour wheel is now further away. This is something to get used to.

The good thing about a big and high resolution display is you can see all the details very clearly. If you work on low resolution files, those will look pixelated when you zoom in. All those old wallpapers you downloaded years ago may look pixelated on this display.

I actually don't use the ACK05 shortcut remote (full review) because I can access more shortcuts with a keyboard.

This was drawn with Medibang Paint Pro. I did not experience any issues. The workflow is smooth and uneventful.

This was drawn with Medibang Paint Pro as well. Pen performance is fantastic. This is a professional tool for digital artists.

This was drawn with Clip Studio Paint.

The felt pen tip is satisfying to work with. Buy them.

Conclusion

The XPPen Artist Pro 24 (Gen 2) 4K looks good and works well. Pen is accurate and sensitive. Display is big, colour accurate and sufficiently bright. The matte glass surface is wonderful to draw on.

There are no major downsides

This is definitely the pen display to consider if you're looking for a large one.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Beautiful design
+ Solid build quality
+ Laminated display
+ Stand included
+ Good colour accuracy with 97% AdobeRGB
+ High 4K UHD resolution with big size good for multi-tasking
+ Matte glass drawing surface
+ Matte drawing surface has minimal grain and colour noise
+ Accurate cursor tracking
+ Pen has tilt and 16K levels of pressure sensitivity
+ Pen case included
+ Two pens included
+ X3 Pro pen is accurate and sensitive
+ Many replacement pen nibs
+ ACK05 shortcut remote included
+ USB-C to USB-C video connection support
+ Cables connection seems secure and durable
+ Fantastic drawing performance
+ Supports Mac, Windows, Android, Chomebook and Linux
+ 18 months warranty
- Slight softness with visuals due to matte surface
- Laminated display has thick glass
- Unnecessarily big bezels
- No OSD menu for manual colour adjustments
- No Power Delivery from pen display
- The Windows driver I've tested do not have pen calibration option

Availability

Here are direct links to the 4K UHD 60Hz model and 1440P QHD 165Hz model on XPPen online store.

And you can find the replacement felt pen tips here.

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