XPPen Deco 03 Wireless 2.4G Digital Graphics Drawing Tablet Drawing Pen Tablet with Battery-Free Passive Stylus and 6 Shortcut Keys (8192 Levels Pressure) 10×6 Inches

First, I've never used a graphics tablet. Second, I don't draw/sketch, but rather I use Illustrator and In Design so my graphics needs are more heavily oriented towards express keys and workflow of the hand. I'm less interested in pen pressure, tilt, or accuracy of the feel of pen on paper, etc.

Cons:
-The tablet senses the pen while it's hovering and I don't find that I like that. Maybe that's precisely what a graphics tablet is supposed to do, but I have to do more research to see if this is a feature that can be turned off or not. Or at least why it would be useful. For now I feel like it's overly sensitive to my actions.
-Not enough express keys! At least two more and it would be basically perfect in my opinion.
-The wheel presses like a button, but indeed I confirmed with XP Pen that it is not functional. Would be AMAZING if that button is what you pressed to switch modes for the wheel.
-On that note, the wheel can be programmed for five separate functions, but after two functions it's a little ridiculous...you have to press the KL/KR button (wherever you program it) to cycle through all five settings to get what you want BUT there's no way to tell which function you're on when cycling! It's kind of silly. You have to scroll the wheel after each click to: A) see if it indeed accepted your click for the next function, B) know what function you're in
-On/Off button on the side please (it's currently on the bottom)
-One inherent thing I hate about Stylus (Stylii?) is they naturally turn around in your hand, so if the buttons on the stylus are not obvious to feel, you have to look at the pen and rotate it to get it in the right place for pressing the buttons. This stylus's buttons are too subtle for me...but getting used to it. I also learned not to task these buttons with any function that takes two keystrokes, such as Crtl or Shift or double clicking. It's too shaky (especially since the tablet senses your hover). So you set the button with the FULL keystroke combination, such as Ctrl A all in one press (maybe everyone knows this already). That's a bummer because now I can't use the button more universally as just ctrl or just shift.
-Sometimes the pen buttons take a couple clicks to work with whatever you set it to. I think this is because I don't have it close enough to the tablet (hence the need for sensing hover). The pen is not battery operated so I could see how a battery powered pen might work a bit differently (do they?) TIP: Don't lay stylus on tablet. It senses it (as I'm sure all tablets do) and overrides the ability of your mouse. If you find your mouse stops working, check the location of your stylus!

PROS:
-Absolutely love the layout and the scroll wheel is sheer brilliance in my opinion. Right or left handed, everything is in one area for the hand rather than have to slide your hand up and down along the side for different buttons. I like this so much that I almost forgive the fact that it lacks enough express keys. 🙂
-The driver is packed with features. You can set sensitivity for pressure. Any of the buttons with any keystroke you want. You can set for different programs so when you're in that program, the keys automatically start functioning differently depending what software you're using. It has absolute or relative options and you can set for use with two screens or just one of the two that you have, and on and on. TIP-eliminate all other drivers, restart computer and then install this tablet's driver otherwise you'll have glitches.
-Customer support is responsive and within the US. Chat was quickly available, personable and helpful.
-I like the size of 8.5x14. It fits nicely in my lap when I want.
-Love the pen case/holder concept. Fancy!

My four star rating is for the lack of an additional two express keys and a non clicking scroll wheel, otherwise I highly recommend to anyone who wants a very sufficient, feature packed graphics tablet without the higher price of a Wacom.

My intuos 4 pen recently went missing somehow (I blame her dog, she blames my cat). Given the low price of the deco 03 (not that much more than replacing the wacom pen alone), and the fact that it could get to me quicker than an intuos pen, I decided to take a chance with it. I've only had it for a month, so I'll revisit my review after I put some more hours on it, but thus far it has far exceeded my expectations. The build quality has me hoping xp pen makes a cintiq competitor soon, as I'd buy one in a heartbeat. I'm a semi-professional artist, so I use my tablet a lot, though it's not my full time gig, so it's not getting 8 hours of use per day. Over the last month it's probably averaged about 1-4 hours per day of use, and it's holding up well. The drawing surface shows wear, but nothing unreasonable.

Pros:
Price-- Larger than comparable wacom for less than half the price.
Accuracy and Pressure control -- fantastic. Seems as accurate as my wacom, and the pressure sensitivity is more than I can possibly utilize.
Drivers -- I expected some problems here, but they installed fine, have worked without issue the entire month, and allow for a lot of control...
Build quality-- is very high. I expected it to feel cheap, but it really doesn't.
Very light/thin. I never took my Intuos 4 anywhere because it was juuust a bit too clunky to drag around, but this thing is super thin and very light. I regularly throw it in my backpack to work away from home...

Cons: (all are minor nitpicks)
No barrel roll or tilt-- This is not an issue for most of the stuff I do for work, but when Im just painting for myself I really miss tilt. I hope xppen adds this functionality at some point.
Button binding -- The only thing the drivers lack is the ability to bind *anything* you want to the buttons. The options are pretty good, so it's probably not an issue for for 99% of the things people will want to bind, but photoshop drag-to-resize tool requires alt+left click (and can't be remapped for some reason), which you can't bind with the xp pen drivers (wacoms do let you).
Pen tips -- You get a bunch, but there's just one type. I'd like options for different hardnesses to find one that really feels good to me. The basic tip is ok, but it has a very specific, smooth plastic-on-plastic feel that isn't my favorite. Also, the replacement tips are fairly hard to pull out of their case. I had to get needle-nose pliers to pull one out when I needed to replace the first tip, which wore a flat spot in a month of moderate use. That was a lot faster than I expected. I can probably extend that out by being more conscious about rolling the pen occasionally so as to not draw on the same spot every time, but time will tell if this is a real issue.
Pen distance -- One thing that took a little getting used to is that the tablet doesn't read the pen location until you get fairly close to the surface of the tablet (I'd guess 1/2 to 3/4 inch, but I didn't measure it). At first this was really frustrating because I was used to the wacom which has a much further read distance, so frequently when I'd pull off my drawing to use a button function, the pen would stop registering as I was striking hotkeys, and things would get mucked up. I'm getting used to it, so it's mostly not an issue, but it would be a nice quality of life improvement if they could increase the read distance even a little bit.
Pen buttons -- The last minor nitpick is that the bottom barrel button on the pen is too flat along the side of the pen. When drawing it's easy to kinda lose where the buttons are, and hard to locate the by feel. I'd rather they had a bit bigger profile to rest your finger on/let you find them easier...