Introduction

Huion was founded in 2011 with the aim of being an innovative designer and manufacturer of digital ink devices and equivalent solutions, including pen tablets, display tablets and touch computers. We have previously looked over one of Huion's graphics tablets before in the form of the Kamvas Pro 13 (2.5K), a fairly portable device that is priced to interest both digital artists and general content creators for photo/video editing. Huion has products to cover the needs of prosumers and professionals alike, and today we jump up in size, features, and cost to look at another entry from its graphics tablet line.


The Huion Kamvas Pro 24 (4K) was released a few years ago and remains one of the more successful graphics tablets on the market even today. As the name suggests, this is a tablet with an integrated display but no standalone computing that you connect to your own PC/laptop via cables. It's quite large, sporting a 23.8" display fitted with a 10-bit (8-bit + FRC) 3840x2160 IPS panel, making for an active area big enough for sketches and even use as a secondary monitor. There is an integrated stand, a bundled macropad, Huion's software support for further customization, and even a VESA-compatible mount on the back. It supports a pen input device as expected, and thus there is literally a lot to unpack here. Thanks to Huion for providing a sample to TechPowerUp as we begin with a look at the product specifications in the table below.

Packaging and Accessories

The Huion Kamvas Pro 24 (4K) tablet ships in a massive, sturdy cardboard box with a convenient carry handle making it easy to take it to where you will end up using it. This is not really a particularly portable device given the size and weight! On the front is the company logo and product name along with a render of the tablet and salient features listed below. We see more features on the back in a nicely illustrated manner to go with a handy guide on how to go about connecting the tablet to your client PC. Two double flaps on the top help keep the contents in place on their way to you. Opening the box, you will notice thick styrofoam sheets on the top and bottom of the tablet for added protection, which itself comes inside an anti-static plastic cover, and the accessories are placed in a separate cardboard box. These come neatly packed as well, and I will also refer you to this detailed online user manual to know more about the device. There are printed manuals in the form of a quick start guide for the tablet and one more for the Keydial Mini accessory. I also appreciate the branded microfiber cloth which will be handy to wipe the display from time to time.


The Kamvas Pro 24 (4K) is a significantly larger tablet rated for a power consumption of up to 35 W. As such, Huion includes an external power supply capable of providing 57 W to the device, which takes power from a wall socket. We also get a plethora of cables—HDMI, USB Type-C to Type-C, two USB Type-C to Type-A, although these could be longer than the 1-1.5 m stock length—especially since people are likely to use this tied to a PC tower underneath or alongside the desk that the graphics tablet will be on. One of the USB cables is meant for the Keydial Mini to help charge the internal battery or use it wired, with the rest for the tablet. Note the individual, standard connectors here as opposed to something more unified or even using Type-C for display/data/power that newer tablets could adopt, but I also feel customers will appreciate the freedom to use their own cables anyway. Huion also includes a pen holder which unscrews to reveal storage for up to 10 pen nibs. These are pre-filled with five standard nibs and five felt nibs, and in the middle is a clip to help remove a worn nib from the pen. Rounding off the unboxing experience is the digital pen itself with a soft touch texture. It is very comfortable to hold and use and has two buttons closer to the active end. The pen can be easily placed into the holder for when you are taking a break, as seen above.


In the absence of add-on keys on the display itself, Huion throws in the Keydial Mini macropad which sells for $70 by itself. The Keydial Mini adopts the form factor of a calculator/number pad with dimensions of 146 x 92.9 x 10.8 mm and weighs 115 g. There are 18 scissor switch keys as well as a rotary dial at the top, with a 1200 mAh battery feeding the Bluetooth 5.0 wireless connectivity on offer. Battery life is quite good at 70 hours of non-stop use, or 90 days of standby time. There is a Type-C port on the front for wired connectivity/charging, with the battery going from 0-100% in 3.5 hours. You can use this with non-Huion tablets as well, or even as a standalone device. The button on the side helps turn it on and pair it wirelessly, with the logo lighting up as an indicator.

Closer Look

The previous graphics tablets I've used have been 12-13" versions which are small enough to use on your lap if needed. Then there's this Kamvas Pro 24 (4K) with a 23.8" screen fitted into a body that is larger, bulkier, and heavier than anything else covered here before. The overall dimensions are 590 x 364 x 23 mm, so it's not only larger in length and width, but also over twice as thick as the other tablets. Be careful taking the device out of the box and placing it on your desk thus, and certainly account for the space needed to host this. The entire ensemble is built extremely well though, and the bezels are large enough to hold it with your hands without worrying about damaging the display. It's predominantly black throughout and branding comes in the form of "Huion" printed on the bottom. The active area for the display is 527 x 296.5 mm, so you can see how the body is significantly larger all around. The Kamvas Pro 24 (4K) uses a 3840x2160 LCD IPS 60 Hz panel, making for a sharp and responsive panel even for general media consumption, just in case you wanted to use this as a secondary monitor. That said, the anti-glare coating and the semi-matte finish doesn't make colors pop as you might expect, and the max brightness (220 nits) or 10 ms response time won't win any awards either. This is a true IPS panel with a 1200:1 contrast ratio and 178° viewing angles vertically or horizontally, although note that the panel is actually 8-bit with FRC, as opposed to 10-bit native, in case that changes things for your usage. Seen above is an example of how the anti-glare coating presents on the panel, with my two studio lights shining on the display from left and right. I'd say it does well enough in a typical use case, even in a well-lit room with windows, although you'd typically want to position the tablet to avoid direct lighting. The top right corner has an indicator light next to the power button, with the right side having a 3.5 mm audio jack and two USB 2.0 Type-A ports courtesy a USB hub inside. Inputs are on the back facing up, with DC power in and USB Type-C followed by DisplayPort and HDMI to complete the I/O overview.


Examining the Huion Kamvas Pro 24 (4K) from the back shows the thicker chassis which has a raised section at the top that houses the certification sticker as well as two case feet which open up sideways to help prop up the tablet at a better working angle to use the display for drawing/editing. The feet have rubberized bottoms for added grip and are large enough to hold the tablet in place without any stability issues. Note that there is no other elevation step out of the box, aside from having the feet in, although the chassis supports 100 mm x 100 mm VESA mounts to use with an optional monitor arm. This can also help customers use the tablet as a secondary monitor as needed.

User Experience

Connecting the tablet is simple enough given the standard I/O used here. Depending on whether your client device can provide data and video over USB Type-C, you may even be able to get away with two cables in total. The tablet is powered separately by DC input so that particular port will always be used. Then it will be either just a Type-C cable or a combination of Type-C and HDMI/DisplayPort. At this point, simply turn on the tablet using the power button, wherein it will light up white with a blue logo in the middle, followed by showcasing your desktop by default. You can then configure the tablet as a primary or secondary display accordingly, no different from any other monitor on the market.


The Huion website is extremely easy to navigate, and you can find the drivers for the Kamvas Pro 24 (4K) on this page for the OS of your choice. It's a good idea to remove all other graphics/drawing tablet drivers off your system first, although I found the generic Windows drivers did not cause any issues. The latest version of drivers for Windows (v15.7.6.756) are from earlier this year and the installation process is simple. The program takes 60 MB of space and runs light on system resources too. Once installed, it would only show working options if the tablet is connected and powered on. Included here are monitor calibration settings, the expected pen calibration tool and pressure sensitivity slider, and key mapping options for the two buttons on the pen to provide useful shortcuts within arm's reach. You can also correct the active window in the display if it is different from expected, as well as check for firmware updates from within the software itself. Note that the program needs to be running in the background for any of the changes from the default configuration to work.


The Keydial Mini can be used as a standalone device too, or with the tablet in which case the software drivers will show three devices connected (tablet, pen, Keydial Mini). This now allows for similar remapping options for the shortcut keys that effectively make them macro keys on a keyboard, for example. The pre-programmed functions can be handy for various tools, and the rotary dial helps further—it has native wheel support within Windows too!


Pressing and holding the power button pulls up the OSD (on-screen display), which then works with the pen to allow you to do some on-the-fly changes to the display too as seen above. You can change the brightness, color temperature, choose the connection mode, allow for HDR images, and even the aspect ratio as desired. In essence, if the display and pen are already working fine for you on Windows, then there is not a lot to gain from installing the first-party drivers. I would have liked profile support to allow for different sets of shortcuts for different applications—that would have made the re-mapping options even more useful. On the other hand, I suppose working professionals already have their preferred software of choice for drawing/editing, so you could remap once and call it a day.


I mentioned before how the graphics tablets I've used personally have been significantly smaller than this one. I typically use such tablets for taking notes and for easier editing of content such as images, as seen in the example above of the ZMF Caldera Closed headphones. Windows Ink compatibility allows for graphics tablets to work directly with Adobe Creative Suite, and Lightroom in particular. With the larger Kamvas Pro 24 (4K), it was a revelation in allowing for side-by-side images (original + edits) as well as layers in Photoshop. This can also be a godsend for those editing videos in Illustrator, for example. The main benefit of the tablet, as opposed to simply any generic 24" monitor, requires it to be much closer to your eyes and hands to use the pen. Not all programs scale well with the screen resolution either, with the net result being most tools in Adobe CC being far too small at 100% scaling. I ended up going with 150% scaling within Windows, and this does reduce the active working area slightly. The display, while not the best in the world, is plenty good for color accuracy already to not necessitate calibration either. I do wish the anti-glare was better, and the glass was smoother though, although I understand newer Huion tablets seem to be doing better in this regard.

However, the real reason to go for something this big is to use it as a drawing/sketching tablet. The larger display coupled with the pen and the Keydial Mini makes it a breeze to draft technical drawings or illustrations depending on your use case. I really see this as more suited for a professional artist thus, with the tablet doing very well to ignore palms on the screen even without using the glove—which you should be using all the time anyway. The shortcut keys are very handy for tasks like quick zooms, changing brush sizes, and also hotkeys for white balance and alignment. The Kamvas Pro 24 (4K) did not exhibit any noticeable latency in use, and there was also a zero-gap latency between the nib and the cursor itself. You can also extend the display and have a makeshift second monitor or simply have the primary display showing something else of relevance, but you may well need to use a VESA mount arm for this purpose. There's a lot to like here if you are in the market for a graphics tablet, especially a larger one for drawing/sketching. The Huion Kamvas Pro 24 (4K) graphics tablet has an MSRP of $1299 but is currently on sale for $1149 from the Huion online store as of the date of this article. Those in the UK will find the tablet to cost £999 (inc. VAT), and there are also bundle deals with stands and monitor arms if you are interested.