Lyraina's Artblog

This painting is sponsored by Huion, who provided me with an Inspiroy Giano in exchange for a review! This tablet is targeted at professionals who like a large working area and a clean desk: The active working area of 345.4 x 215.9mm (13.6 x 8.5 inch) when used with a desktop computer makes it the largest bluetooth 5.0 tablet currently available on the market.

Unpacking
Everything about the presentation and packaging of the Inspiroy Giano looks and feels sleek, professional, and minimalistic: A beautiful black box with blue accent on the sides reveals the large tablet itself, as well as the the accessories needed to get started:

1 lightweight Huion pen with two buttons (Huion PenTech 3.0)
1 futuristic space donut shaped penholder filled with extra nibs
1 painting glove for looking extra cool
1 QuickStart manual
1 charging cable

The charging cable comes with an USB-C connector on the tablet side, and an USB-A connector to plug into whichever device you want to use for charging or using the tablet. Unlike the description on the website, my tablet did not come with an USB-C adapter. Since my workstation still supports USB-A, that was not a problem in my case, but good to take into consideration if you only have USB-C charging ports available.

The tablet itself features six programmable keys on its left side and a small screen to show battery, pen and bluetooth status as well as indicating when the tablet is in sleep mode (tablets deserve some rest too!).

Setup

Setup, connecting and installing the driver went smooth. If the tablet is not recognized after pairing it via bluetooth, a restart can solve that issue. Once set up, the Huion Tablet software will guide you through how to enable Accessibility features in your system preferences to allow for full functionality (this is on MacOS). This software is also where you can program the keys on tablet and pen to whichever shortcuts you would like to use. Left-handed artists will find an option to rotate the working area by 180° in the settings as well.

Bonus tip: The default setting is using the entire tablet surface for drawing. This however may lead to a slightly less accurate drawing experience if the screen ratio is different from the tablet ratio. Due to this, I recommend changing the settings to instead project the screen ratio on the tablet, as you can see here:

Painting Experience

None of my existing tablets is using bluetooth, so I was eager to try out this feature: Connecting the device is as easy as pairing it in the bluetooth menu, and it even came pre-charged. Ready to plug & play paint!

I noticed no delay whatsoever using bluetooth, so this is a very nice way of avoiding cable clutter on the desk. One charge lasts longer than anyone should work within one day, and even if one happened to work for 18 hours straight, the tablet is still useable while being charged via the cable. The pen requires neither battery nor charging. Every now and then the driver seems to not recognize the tablet – restarting the computer solves that, but isn’t the most elegant solution.

The pressure sensitivity works as well as any other tablet I’ve used before and the large surface area allows for big arm movements, which feels quite nice. The surface is smooth without being slippery. The programmable keys don’t require too much pressure to be activated – my overused artist’s fingers are grateful for that!

One downside is that the keys do not allow using two keys at once: If I want to click both option and space key for example, I need to map that combination on one key bind instead of pressing the option key and the space key together on the tablet. This allows for less customization options and I found myself just using my keyboard instead most of the time.
I did miss a touch bar or touch ring for changing brush size: Using buttons for this feels rather slow, and using control-option-drag in photoshop takes a little getting used to. By the end of my painting I was almost used to the new way of changing brush size, so this seems mostly a matter of preference and practice.

Painting & Process
I miss traveling, so I wanted to paint something inspired by an old vacation photograph from a few years ago, and giving it a fantasy twist. I started with a rough composition sketch based on my reference, then added colors: Magenta and cyan is one of my favorite color combinations, so I went all-in on those! The rest is mostly a matter of adding more and more details to every element of the painting, while making sure the overall contrast is highest where I want the viewer to look: The glowing stag as well as the girl.

Final Thoughts
I greatly enjoyed working with the Inspiroy Giano, with the exception of missing touch control for changing my brush size, which to me still is the most intuitive and fastest way. The six buttons would be more than enough if they allowed pressing two at the same time (i.e. command + space to zoom in Photoshop), which at this point they don’t. It would be great if this could be implemented with a firmware update in the future.

Bluetooth and pressure sensitivity worked like a charm, I really like having one less cable on my desk! The tablet looks and feels very high-quality and survived being walked on by a 5 kg cat without complaint (do not try this at home). The break time reminder is a cute and thoughtful addition! Due to its large size I would recommend this tablet for anyone with a screen of 27“ and above. At the time of this review, it costs just short of 200€ / 200$.

Huion Official Store: https://bit.ly/3MegpvQ
Huion Amazon: https://amzn.to/3tailPe
#Huion #InspiroyGiano