XPPen Artist Ultra 14 review: an OLED drawing tablet that's surprisingly portable and fun

I've got a confession to make: I'm not particularly bothered about 16K pressure sensitivity anymore, even though new tablets like XPPen's Artist Ultra 14 make a play of the spec. We've reached the point where manufacturers can keep doubling the numbers on the box, but 8,192 versus 16,384 pressure levels isn't going to make your brush strokes twice as good, and I'd much rather see that attention paid to the screen, the pen feel and how the tablet is going to be used.

That's what makes the new XPPen Artist Ultra 14 interesting, because after using it for two weeks I think XPPen has got the balance about right. It's a $699 / £599 drawing display with a 14-inch 2.8K OLED, a 90Hz refresh rate, and a 720g body that's genuinely easy to pick up and throw into a bag.

It's also refreshingly straightforward to get going. The Artist Ultra 14 is essentially plug-and-play, so while drivers are available if you want to configure the tablet and make the most of its controls, you can connect it and start drawing without turning setting the tablet up into a stress test. That's exactly what I want from a portable pen display, particularly one that's likely to be pulled out in different places rather than permanently installed on a desk – though if you have a small desk or are a student, look for a neat tablet; the Artist Ultra 14's smaller size feels like a good option.

Perfectly portable design

The design makes the Artist Ultra 14 a portable, easy-to-use tablet. It's slim and light enough to hold comfortably in one hand, with hard-edged, angular sloping corners on the rear that give it a little more character than the usual flat, curved slab, and it feels like XPPen considered that you might actually carry this around. There's a folding stand in the box as well, so you don't immediately have to start adding accessories just to get a sensible drawing angle, and like the tablet it can fit into a small bag.

XPPen has gone down the familiar route of giving you a fairly generous collection of extras, including USB-C and USB cables, power adapters, the Quick Key remote and two X3 Pro styluses. I ended up favouring the slimmer pen design because it sits more naturally in my hand, particularly when I'm drawing for longer periods, although having the 'fat' option is useful if you need more on-stylus buttons. As ever, they both feel a little light in the hand and lack the weight and balance customisation of the Wacom Pro Pen 3, which remains my go-to style.

The display is where the Artist Ultra 14 really earns its keep, and like its larger Artist Ultra 16, it delivers a bright, smooth screen. That 2.8K resolution on a 14-inch panel works out at roughly 243ppi, so lines and small details look very clean, while the 16:10 aspect ratio gives you a little more vertical room than the 16:9 screens used on many similarly sized displays. That's particularly useful once you start using the best digital art software, like Photoshop and Rebelle, or animation software, which starts filling the edges of the screen with panels and timelines.

It's also a fully laminated display, and XPPen quotes ±0.4mm centre accuracy for the pen, which goes some way towards explaining why the drawing experience feels so direct. The pen isn't sitting some obvious distance above the pixels, and in use, when working on small details, there's very little sense that I'm fighting the hardware to get the line where it needs to go.

Why OLED matters

The OLED panel itself is lovely. Colours are bright and punchy without feeling cartoonishly overcooked, blacks are properly deep, and the 100,000:1 contrast gives the whole display a bit more depth than you're used to getting from an IPS pen display. XPPen uses a True RGB Stripe pixel arrangement too, and while that's hardly something you'll think about while drawing, I never did until I glanced at the spec sheet; it helps keep fine detail and text looking clean on a screen you sit very close to, because it is a smaller 14-inch screen.

The 90Hz refresh rate also makes sense in practice, because it's so smooth and responsive. Moving around the canvas, zooming, panning or using my finger to tap menus all feels very fluid, and the pen has that lovely sense of simply keeping up with what I'm doing. Touch can be switched on and off using a physical control at the top right of the display, alongside the brightness controls, which is much nicer than having to disappear into a settings menu every time you don't want your palm triggering something. The tablet also comes with a drawing glove, which is needed with touch turned on as it can be overly responsive, and I often randomly selected colours when using ArtRage because the colour wheel sits exactly where my hand rests.

In fact, I've spent quite a bit of time using the Artist Ultra 14 in ArtRage, and one of my favourite tests has been painting a sketch of a boat moored on the seafront from a recent trip to Croatia. I was working with a fairly limited palette, but the blues and greens in the water really pop on the OLED, and there's enough colour depth and contrast to make the whole thing feel more alive without me having to start pushing the palette around to compensate for the screen.

That's probably the biggest difference between reading the specs and actually using the Artist Ultra 14. The numbers are impressive, certainly, but the display just feels easy to work on. Small details can be scrawled and sketched with precision, the surface glides nicely under the pen, and the combination of the OLED and 90Hz refresh gives everything an effortless smoothness that makes me want to keep drawing.

It's small but perfectly formed

There is an obvious compromise: the 14-inch display size. Some artists will want a bigger canvas, particularly if you're working on detailed illustration, 3D modelling or animation where toolbars and timelines can quickly eat into your available space. XPPen has the Artist Ultra 16 for that, or there are larger recommended OLED alternatives like the Xencelabs Pen Display 16, but I think the smaller screen makes sense here because portability is clearly part of the point.

The closest rival is the older Wacom's Movink 13, which takes an even more extreme approach to portability. It's just 420g and uses a 13.3-inch Full HD OLED, with multi-touch and Wacom's excellent pen technology.

The Wacom is undeniably easier to carry, but the XPPen feels like the better all-round display to me. It may be an extra 300g, but in return you're getting 2.8K rather than Full HD, 90Hz rather than 60Hz, a larger 16:10 canvas and broader claimed colour coverage. Wacom's pen feel remains excellent, and if every gram matters, the Movink 13 is still a very compelling alternative, but with everything taken into account, I'd take the extra weight of the Artist Ultra 14.

The price makes that decision even more interesting. Wacom has been discounting the Movink 13, bringing it much closer to the $699 / £599 Artist Ultra 14, so you're now looking at two portable OLED pen displays that aren't miles apart in price but take very different hardware approaches.

Artist Ultra 14 is a new standard

For me, the XPPen Artist Ultra 14 is the better overall drawing display. The screen gives you far more room and resolution than the Movink 13; the 90Hz refresh makes it feel wonderfully fluid; the colour is excellent; and the X3 Pro pen is a pleasure to use, particularly in the larger form factor I preferred. The Wacom remains the one I'd pick if portability and its superb pen feel came first, because 420g is hard to argue with.

What I like most about the XPPen, though, is that it doesn't feel like I've bought a portable version of a desktop drawing display and then had to accept a long list of compromises. It feels like a proper little creative drawing tablet that happens to be small enough to carry around, and that's a useful distinction.

At this price, XPPen has managed to cram in the sort of display technology I'd expect from a $1,000-plus pen display, and it's light and sturdy enough that I don't have to think twice about putting it in a bag. There are more portable, larger, and cheaper displays, but for the combination of screen quality, drawing experience, and portability, the Artist Ultra 14 is one of the most convincing pen displays I've used at this price.