So I’m a bit of a stranger when it comes to graphics tablets. I’ve never really felt like I needed one for what I do. My nine-to-five consists of creating graphic images and photo editing assets for social media, and for TechNuovo, well, I make thumbnails for the videos I make, like this one. But nevertheless, I thought I’d give this product a go, and see if it can improve my workflow.
What’s nice about the Inspiroy Dial 2 is how neat everything is. The graphics pad mimicked my entire monitor, and moving the pen around in programs like Photoshop felt really responsive. It has a 10.5 x 6.56-inch workspace, which is very smooth to the touch and aids with the pen’s glide. Speaking about the pen, it’s completely powerless, so no need to charge or insert any batteries, and there are a number of nibs available in the pen holder, which consist of felt and plastic. I definitely preferred the felt nib, it gave more of a felt tip pen on paper type feel, which was actually pretty authentic.
Down the left-hand side, there are two dials and six buttons. What’s nice is these buttons and dials can be customised to keyboard shortcuts inside of the Huion software. As I am a Photoshop user as my main software for work, I’ll run through the default setup for that, though as I said these can be changed. By default, the buttons are as follows: the top dial I’ve got set to zoom in and out on a project and the bottom dial adjusts brush size. The buttons flick between the paintbrush tool, the rubber, the colour picker, Save As the hand tool to drag around my document and also Undo. On the pen, I’ve got it to switch between the paintbrush size options and rubber, in case I make a mistake.
Build quality is fairly solid too, and there’s no flex when extra pressure is applied to the pad. The dials too are also fairly solid, and there’s no noticeable wobble to them either. There are two ways you can connect the Huion Inspiroy Dial 2, and that’s through the provided USB Type-C cable or Bluetooth if you have that available.
However, if you’re a bit of a shortcut addict, then six buttons and two dials are definitely not going to be enough to get you through your daily workflow. You’re still going to need a keyboard to hit all of your desired shortcuts. But saying that, and for what I do in Photoshop, which is pretty much thumbnail design for the channel, photo editing images I’ve taken on trips away, as well as some other social media-type posts in my daily job, the Huion Inspiroy Dial 2 is a pretty capable graphics tablet.
For a graphics tablet coming in at £127 though on Amazon, this is an amazing product indeed. It worked really well for what I needed and the price point for this thing I think is extremely competitive.
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