Ugee 16 review: a perfect beginner drawing display at a good price

Ugee's latest budget drawing tablet gets so much right, but it's not perfect.

Ugee 16 review; photos of a person painting using a drawing tablet display
(Image: © Future / Ugee)

Our Verdict

Delivers a smooth and responsive digital drawing experience for less, but pro artists will want more. An ideal first pen display for a beginner or hobbyist.

For

  • Good drawing experience
  • Comes with a metal stand
  • Simple to setup

Against

  • Feels filmsy

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The new Ugee 16 is the latest budget drawing tablet with a high-end spec list to come out of China, and it's hard to not be impressed. The Ugee range may be fairly new on your radar despite launching in 1998 and winning numerous design awards, but with each release the brand gets better and delivers more.

While we liked the smaller Ugee UE12 Plus for its value, our reviewer couldn't get past the large bezel which restricted the drawing space. This is something the Ugee 16 mitigates with a slightly slimmer frame and a larger drawing space overall. That's not to say it's perfect, as I'll cover below, but for the price, ease of use and package over all Ugee once again claws back points for overall value. (For a broader view, read where Ugee tablets fit into our guide to the best drawing tablets.)

Wacom Movink 13

Wacom Movink

This costs almost four times the Ugee 16, but it's also four times as slim, portable, features a beautiful OLED display and has the Wacom quality to last.

Xencelabs Pen Display 16

Xencelabs Pen Display 16 Essentials

Another vibrant OLED 4K display but Xencelabs' is not quite as slim as the Movink above. It's still a high quality tablet with plenty of extras.

XPPen XPPen Magic Drawing Pad

XPPen Magic Drawing Pad

This is small iPad alt designed for digital art, so it features the same pen display tech and 16K pen pressure stylus as XPPen's larger desktop displays.

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