The drawing tablet market has been simmering for years. Wacom has held its crown, Huion and XPPen have been snapping at its heels, but innovation has often felt incremental. That changes with the XPPen Artist Ultra 16.
This is a 15.6-inch pen display with a 4K OLED screen, twin styluses offering 16,384 pressure levels, a new X-Touch gesture system, Red Dot design recognition, and full Calman-verified colour accuracy. It’s XPPen’s most ambitious tablet yet, and one that feels designed to compete directly with Wacom’s Cintiq Pro and the OLED-based Wacom Movink 13. It’s aiming for a place among the best drawing tablets of 2025.
Straight out of the box, the Artist Ultra 16 feels premium. There’s a reassuring weight and solidity to the design that brings it closer to Xencelabs’ recent releases than XPPen’s own older hardware. The packaging is, as usual with the brand, over the top. This means every cable and accessory you could want is included: USB-C, HDMI, a Bluetooth Quick Key remote, and multiple power adapters for international travel. It’s a detail that speaks to XPPen’s understanding of how creatives actually work, especially those who expect the best drawing tablets with a stylus to come with everything needed on day one.
OLED at last
The big news is the OLED panel. While we’ve had OLED phones, laptops and monitors for years, pen displays have stubbornly stuck with LCDs. OLED changes everything: blacks are deep, colours pop, and contrast is on another level.
In use, the screen feels lively and crisp. A painted sketch I’d been toying with suddenly came alive, the greens and blues practically bursting out of the screen like a Sonic the Hedgehog level. This is an older sketch I wanted to open and tweak, checking to see how different OLED is, and it reveals what OLED was supposed to bring to artists: vibrancy and subtlety in equal measure, especially when paired with the best digital art software.
It’s worth noting the OLED caveats: burn-in remains a concern with static UI panels, and brightness can’t quite match the best IPS displays under harsh studio lights. But in normal, controlled conditions, this screen is as good as it gets right now. And XPPen has some built-in fail-safes, such as an auto-sleep to turn the display off if not in use.
Stylus tech and touch
You get two pens in the box, both comfortable and familiar if you’ve used XPPen before. The 16K pressure levels are the headline spec, and while I’m not convinced artists will feel the jump from 8,192, it certainly doesn’t hurt. More importantly, the pens feel accurate and natural in the hand. The real tests will be latency, jitter, and parallax under different apps and operating systems (I've only used the tablet with Photoshop on macOS to date), things I’ll dig into more in my full review.
The new X-Touch system promises intuitive gesture control. In my early testing, setup on macOS was plug and play, no fuss, no friction. Windows and Calman calibration I’ll be testing shortly, while Android connectivity has been trickier. On Android 15 it should, in theory, be seamless, but so far it hasn’t been. More on that in the full review.
Touch control is something that splits the digital art community. I'm someone who uses an iPad Pro a lot, so I like the intuitive nature of gestures, but I find it can lead to mistakes and unwanted lines. There's a little button at the back of the tablet to switch X-Touch on and off, so it feels like a win-win.
The OLED tussle begins
Wacom has already pushed into OLED with its Movink 13, a smaller, slimmer, ultra-portable device that I described as “near faultless” in my review. It’s wonderfully slim and light, but capped at Full HD resolution.
The Ultra 16 feels like XPPen’s answer: bigger, sharper (4K versus 1080p), and with all the trimmings: 16K pressure, Calman colour certification, and pro-level build. If Movink proves OLED’s potential, the Ultra 16 may be the device that makes it standard.
My quick specs comparison below highlights the Artist Ultra 16's higher resolution and increased pressure sensitivity, ideally pitched to pro artists seeking top-tier performance. The Movink 13, while more portable and lightweight, offers a solid OLED experience with professional-grade colour accuracy. But for everyday use, Ultra 16's size, resolution, and colour accuracy feel a step up.
Artist Ultra 16 |
Movink 13 |
|
|---|---|---|
Display Size |
15.6 inches |
13.3 inches |
Resolution |
4K (3840 x 2160) |
Full HD (1920 x 1080) |
Panel Type |
OLED |
OLED |
Colour Accuracy |
Calman Verified |
Pantone Validated, Pantone SkinTone Validated |
Pressure Levels |
16,384 |
8,192 |
Tilt Recognition |
±60° |
±60° |
Connectivity |
USB-C, USB-A, HDMI |
USB-C |
Weight |
Approx. 1.2kg |
420g |
Thickness |
Approx. 12mm |
4 – 6.6mm |
Operating Systems |
macOS, Windows, Android, ChromeOS |
macOS, Windows, Android, ChromeOS |
Accessories |
x2 Stylus, Quick Key remote, Stand |
Wacom Pro Pen 3 |
First impressions matter, and the XPPen Artist Ultra 16 has made a strong one. It looks and feels professional, the OLED panel is stunning, and the out-of-the-box package leaves little to be desired.
Yes, I want to push it further, test Windows drivers, long-term colour accuracy, and real workflow reliability. But already, it’s clear: this is the next step XPPen needed to take.
The battleground for the next generation of pen displays is OLED. Wacom moved early with the Movink, Huion is close behind, and with the Artist Ultra 16, XPPen may just have nudged ahead, particularly on spec, experience, and value. For digital artists weighing up a new drawing tablet, this one deserves serious consideration. Come back soon, my full review is due shortly.
Visit the XPPen store for more.
