Pressure Levels
Last updated
Last updated
Here's a few takeaways:
More ≠ better
You just need 2048
It is dictated by tablet firmware, not by hardware.
TheSevenPens once said:
We live in a world where more is better.
In the case of pressure levels: No. More does not equal better. Like with pretty much everything, there is a point where the returns are negligible. 7Pens argues 2048 is enough, and I absolutely agree with that.
More important than just pressure levels are initial activation force and pressure range (in this case, max pressure), both of which are generally not advertised, though there are a few exceptions. For example, Huion does advertise their IAF and max pressure for the PW600 lineup of pens, that being 2g and 500g respectively and XP-Pen's X3 Pro pen being advertised with and IAF and max pressure of 3g and 400g respectively.
There are resources to finding the IAF and pressure ranges of these pens. I've embedded some spreadsheets and links that you can look at.
As I said before, I absolutely agree with 7Pens' argument that you just need 2048. Heck, Wacom still sells a tablet with 2048 pressure levels (CTL-X72). What gives?
I recommend you watch 7Pen's video on this topic.
Yes, you can obviously get away with less... much less actually. Anecdotally, 512 is plenty enough for regular drawing tasks. I only have 1024 levels that I can use in Paint Tool SAI, as it uses the legacy Windows Ink API.
7Pens's formula of having double the amount of pressure available compared to brush width is a great way of putting it. Regardless though, it's not really something I would bother about. All tablets these days have at least 2048, and its not like you can't go and enable pressure smoothing, so looking for pressure levels is pretty much irrelevant when buying a new tablet.
Even then, it's barely relevant when looking for old tablets, such as ancient professional Wacom tablets before the Intuos 4 (PTK-x40), and consumer Wacom tablets before the 2015 Intuos tablets (CTL/H-x90), which have less than 2048 levels of pressure.
Isn't this a fun piece of advertising material. Ugee claims you can enjoy 16k pressure levels just by firmware upgrading your tablet. In that case, what is the point of advertising so many pressure levels. The difference between 8192 and 16384 levels of pressure is basically negligible, even more so if there's no changes to hardware.
Anyway, that aside, it pretty much proves the fact that it's just firmware that dictates the amount of pressure levels that a tablet reports.
Huion does the same. Their Chinese lineup of Gaomon tablets can be firmware upgradable to 16k pressure levels.
So why more? Simply, because of marketing. Remember when I reiterated 7Pens saying we live in a world where more is better? More pressure levels makes marketing easier. The fact that a manufacturer can increase the range of interpolation and add another pressure bit makes it easy to just edit the firmware and market it as some new innovation. XPPen certainly did that with their X3 pro pens.
I wouldn't be surprised if we see 32768 pressure levels in the near future. After all, big numbers make products more enticing. It's the placebo that counts.
