hey everyone to here today I'm reviewing the ug ue2 plus which is a 11.9 in pen display first of all disclaimer this is a review unit provided by the company in this video I'll just present to you my findings so that you can decide whether this is worth the money and the price for this pen display is US $199 before discount and there is actually another model the ue2 which is 11.6 in that model also has eight hot keys but it does not have the scroll wheel and that is US $179 let me give you the bottom line this pen display has good build quality it has good color accuracy the drawing performance is excellent the screen is small so it can feel quite cram when drawing on this especially when there are many user interface elements on the display the main limitation is the brightness can definitely be higher and I will talk more about that later on and if you stay till the end of the review I will give you another recommendation at around the same price point which I think is a much better value for money all right so that's the bottom line let's move on to the full review let's unbox this and have a look at items included so there's a piece of FO here and that's the pen display so everything is neatly packed inside the pen display comes with a protective film on it to prevent scratches during shipping this is a USBC to USB a cable for power a USBC to USBC video cable one nip remover and I counted 12 replacement pen tips quick start guide and warranty info the pen is lightweight it feels plasticky but it's solid enough I like the matte textured surface which has a nice grip there is no silicone grip so this is not going to attract dust I do wish the front part here is thicker to prevent your fingers from sliding down when you are drawing but this pen does have enough grip to prevent that anyway if you want to make this thicker you can buy one of those apple pencil grips and put one here there is slight movement with the pen tip when in contact with the drawing surface Some people prefer a firm pen tip but I'm fine with this the pen supports til and slightly over 8,000 levels of pressure sensitivity there are two side buttons here which are customizable there is no eraser at the back of the pen this is not powered by battery so no charging is required let's remove the glossy protective [Music] film so this is how the pen display looks it's glossy on this side where the buttons are and the display has a matte textured surface if you look close enough you can see this is a matte screen protector this is not Matt textured glass which is to say that it may develop scratches with usage over time so this design looks good it's a rather clean and simple design there are eight hot keys by the S the hot Keys have good feedback when pressed this is the scroll wheel with audible clicks there is no button in the middle so if you need to switch functionality for the scroll wheel you have to assign one of the hot keys to do that this pen display is quite thin thinner than most laptops and you can see the glossy side with the parallel line pattern now this top part here is actually higher compared to this part here so this part here is higher compared to this part here and this is met textured on the back there are two big pieces and two small pieces of rubber with good grip on the table and that's the UGI logo and this is textured on the other side there are two parts this smaller one is for the 3:1 cable which is sold separately and this bigger one is for the USBC to USBC video cable there are actually labels beside but the labels are not that obvious at the top left you can find the power light indicator a power button that you can hold on for 3 seconds to use the pen display as a pen tablet without the display these two buttons are for adjusting brightness and you can press press these two buttons together to switch between srgb Adobe RGB and P3 mode and lastly here at the bottom there is the pen holder I've just connected the pen display to the MacBook using the USBC video cable which is 1.5 M long the L shap connector can be used with the pen display or you can use the standard connector and right now the laptop is powering the pen display which means it's going to drain the laptop battery much faster so I have the laptop connected to a power source as well the bzel are quite thick which I usually don't mind but in this case it actually makes the 11.9 in display feel smaller I've already color calibrated the display and I measure color support for 100% srgb 98% odob RGB which is really good and 93% P3 the maximum brightness unfortunately is just 14 nits which is quite far off the advertise 200 nits so right now it's running at maximum brightness and at this brightness I would say you definitely need to draw your curtains I do wish this display can be brighter I've also tried providing additional power to the pen display but that did not improve brightness and for some reason I was able to get better color calibration with Windows than with Mac OS so with Windows I could get 100% srgb but with Mac OS it's just 93% srgb so as you can see the main limiting factor that affects visual quality is actually brightness and the vi angles is not that great there is noticeable drop and brightness when you view the display from an angle so you can only get the best visual quality when you view the display directly straight on and this is how the anti GL looks and it's quite aggressive because it diffuses the reflections into this big block of white and because the brightness of the display is not that high the colors cannot go through the diffused Reflections this by the way is not a touch screen the resolution is 1920x 108 and on this 11.9 in display all the visuals look quite sharp with PR slight pixelation the M textured screen protector does introduce slight grein and color noise to affect the image quality but it's not too bad this display is laminated so there is no gap between the LCD and the drawing surface so when drawing it really looks like the line is appearing directly beneath the pen tip however ever there is still the latency cap as the line is trying to catch up with the pen tipe and this is normal this doesn't affect my drawing the size of the UI elements such as text the icons the pallets looks small to me because the display is small so this is how big the display is compared to A4 size paper you can see A4 is this much WI and this much taller so this is not a big display generally speaking when I recommend pen displays I would recommend you go for at least 13 in or larger but the advantage here is well the price smaller pen displays are just more affordable I've just increased the UI Skilling to 150% so the tax icons and pallets are now bigger but the canvas space is now smaller proportionally and this is what I will work with because I do prefer the UI to look bigger now because the UI is not bigger you will have to scroll a bit here with the layest pallette if you have many layers and you will have to scroll through all the brushes because there is not enough resolution to show all the brushes so you will have to scroll through let's see what you can do with the driver this is the Windows driver the Mac OS driver has similar functionality except there is no windows ink feature and for the Windows driver you can actually adjust the brightness contrast color temperature from within the driver this is not available for Mac OS so under pen settings you can enable or disable Mouse mode pen pressure tilt Windows ink you can customize the side buttons and I usually have one of them set to switch monitor or switch display so that I can move the cursor from this display to the other display and back because I use a dual display setup and on the pen pressure you can TW the pressure curve by adjusting the control points and there are three control points yeah or you can choose from the pre-programed shortcuts now here it says the pressure support is up to 8,191 according to ug you can actually upgrade the firmware for this pen display and increase the pressure all the way up to 16,000 over levels but for me I'll just stick with 8,000 because there's not much difference between 8,000 and 16,000 in the real world so under drawing work area this is where you can map a portion of the pen display to the actual desktop so I have a one to one mapping and if for some reason the cursor is not beneath the penti which is to say there is cursor misalignment you can tap here under advanced settings to calibrate the cursor and the pen make sure you choose the correct display to calibrate R before you calibrate and under shortcut keys is where you can customize the eight hot keys and the scroll wheel so you can input your own keyboard shortcut Mouse function there are some additional functions such as uh switch monter pen eraser toggle Precision mode which will move the cursor much slowly so that you can draw with Precision eraser you can display or hide the driver interface you can um set one of the buttons to switch ring function which will switch the functionality for the scroll wheel you can have the hotkeys run applications as well or even shut down the computer there are also multimedia controls and under the roller here there are four pre-programmed scroll wheel shortcuts for zoom scroll brush size and rotate and you can add another one it is not possible to disable this for shortcuts and this last option is not working if you use a variety of apps you can create groups of shortcuts specific to those apps and the shortcuts will launch automatically when the apps are active so to do so you just have to add the apps you want here for example you can add Photoshop here customize all the shortcuts for Photoshop and then add another app maybe for Adobe Illustrator and create another group of shortcuts for Adobe Illustrator and lastly this is where you can save all the shortcuts time for some line tests the app that I'm using is Medi Bank paint Pro and this is how thick the brush is Let's test the initial activation Force so I'm going to draw some Thin lines very slowly thin diagonal lines this is also to test for Jeter if [Music] any okay let's zoom in and have a look so the lines are actually quite straight the diagonal line wobble Orit is not that noticeable and any wubble iner is really from my hand so this is very good the initial activation force is quite low let's Zoom down and let's test the tapering strokes this is good the lines are able to taper smoothly and sharply okay this one is not that sharp but most of the other lines they are qu sharp line transition from thin to thick sometimes it's difficult to draw thin lines after drawing thick lines and this pen is able to do so so that's great and this is also a diagonal line and I don't see any diagonal line wobble let's see if we can draw lines with consistent line wids by maintaining consistent pressure and yes we can and dots sometimes don't appear so you have to tap and drag slightly at least with this app the last test is for cursor misalignment so what I'm going to do here is to draw separate lines and try to join the lines without the lines overshooting without leaving gaps so it seems seems like I am able to do so so there are no issues with cursor misalignment Tu sensitivity works fine the cursor can follow the direction of the pen so I can have broad vertical Strokes thin vertical Strokes broad horizontal strokes and thin horizontal strokes and I can use this for shading cursor track cheing at the extreme age seems accurate enough however if you te the pen lower at the extreme Edge you can see the cursor will misalign slightly if you have the cursor closer to the center and you til the pen [Music] low I can see the cursor is still directly beneath the pen tip let's draw something while I talk more about the drawing experience so I'm using Mac OS and the drawing app is mini Bank paint and I have this pen display connected to additional power to increase the brightness slightly let me use the sui brush okay so this is how thick the line is I actually wanted to use infinite painter but infinite painter uh is only available on Android Android and Android doesn't look that great with this uh pen display so that's why I'm using Med Bank paint this is my usual drawing speed and the line quality is really good so this is definitely the performance you can expect when drawing with other apps such as Photoshop CR uh clip Studio paint yeah I don't have any issues with the diagonal line wobble so everything looks and feels very uh straight and because the pen is so expressive um sorry the penc so sensitive you can draw very expressive lines I'm using mostly the keyboard for all my shortcuts because with the keyboard I can have access to all shortcuts compared to using the hotkeys where it's limited to just [Music] eight I'm actually holding the pen at a rather low angle which is comfortable for me to draw with and there is no um issue with cursor misalignment so one thing I notice when drawing on a small display is I have to zoom in and out quite often because well uh sometimes you have to zoom out to see what the overall view yeah with a larger display you can actually see the overall view without having to zoom out so that's the advantage but here um you do have to zoom in and out quite often so if you don't have to zoom in and out often you can actually uh improve your workflow enhance productivity so let me show you the Thin and Thick lines so let's have a b here thick thin thick thin thick thin thin thin thick thin thick and thin yeah so with a pendis sensitive you can draw very expressive lines very easily there is a cursor here uh but depending on the app you use you can actually turn off the cursor if you want to hatching lines look all right looks fine oops Yeah okay um let me erase this part here a bigger [Music] eraser I'm actually drawing a shop by the street here in Singapore yeah so notice the Thin and Thick lines this really helps make your sketch look more uh interesting because you have uh varied line waves so as mentioned earlier the line quality here is definitely good enough for creating professional art if I need more drawing area I will have to hide the pallets by the left and right yeah so this will give me a larger area to work with for drawing if you switch uh you like to draw with lots of tools and you switch uh between tools quite frequently um you will definitely benefit with having the pallets by the side and hence uh you should get a larger pen display okay I really like how the lines are turning out this is very [Music] fluid and I'm holding the pan at a rather low angle which is the comfortable angle for me to draw with and there is no custom is alignment the textured surface is quite nice to draw on but it does feel slightly plasticky I'm not sure if you know what I mean but it does uh feel more plasticky compared to drawing on mat textured glass so this is what I have so far the lines appear exactly how I expect them to way I'm not using any smoothing for the lines so if I draw a slow diagonal line here my coloring style is not very Prett precise I'm not very particular about coloring within the lines I highly recommend you get a proper tablet stand because it's going to be way more comfortable to uh draw on this tablet when it's propped up if you need it higher just get a laptop stand because right now I'm actually using the pen display playay flat on a table and I've been using this for the past hour or so and it's not uh that comfortable because I have to hunch down and look at the pen display so this is the completed sketch let's remove the color so that you can have a look at the line quality so the line quality is fantastic it really is so the drawing experience is quite satisfying let's draw some Thin lines here yeah you can draw really thin Lines by barely glancing the pen on the surface on the display let's talk about Android support and there are several issues so right now I have the pen display connected to the Samsung Tab S9 Fe plus using the USBC video cable and the display is black because the USB C Port here cannot output video okay first issue this horizontal or landscape orientation is mapped to the vertical or portrait orientation of the Android device and the Android device always has to be used in vertical orientation so if I draw from the bottom left to the right to the top to the top left and back down you can see I'm drawing a flat rectangle here but on the tablet it's a vertical rectangle so the mapping is off and there's no way for you to change the mapping because there is no Android driver the second issue is if I want to circle the word tab I cannot do so because I cannot see the cursor so I don't know where the cursor is because I cannot see it yeah so I'm trying to draw a perfect circle and you can see I cannot due to the issue with mapping and because I cannot see the cursor and the last issue is this is not attach screen so you cannot use finger gestures to undo or navigate so if you want to use finger gestures you have to use the other hand so right now I have the pen display connected to the Samsung Tab S9 Ultra which can output video to the pen display I have also connected the pen display to additional power because this tablet cannot drive the pen display at maximum brightness so when my pen is near the display I cannot see the cursor but I can still click on things so let's open this drawing app even though there is no cursor it doesn't matter because the invisible cursor will be directly Ben the pen tip so let's draw something just a simple rectangle and it works fine so the line is always directly beneath the pen tip so there is actually no issues with drawing and pressure sensitivity works but tilt sensitivity does not work and because this does not support finger gestures you cannot zoom pen and rotate you cannot undo by the way when you're drawing if there are no lines uh you have to go into the settings to enable or disable finger mode drawing or pen mode so that the pen can work but the main issue here is you cannot use finger gestures so it's quite inconvenient when you're using all this drawing apps that are optimized for finger gestures and because you cannot use finger gestures you cannot go back to the home screen you have to rely on the tablet to go back to the home screen uh in this case I actually have to quit this app in order to get back to the home screen let's quit or close Samsung Dex exit Samsung Dex and have a look so now this is using mirror mode and I need to rotate this so that uh let me rotate it the other way so that I can feel the screen or display better there are black bars on the left and right because this display is using 16x 10 aspect ratio whereas this is 16x 99 so the pen still works let's open the same app again and again no finger gesture support so I have to use my fingers here now this is better compared to Samsung Dex because now you can use your finger jack testes here to control whatever is here on the pen display so let's draw something again yeah so it works I can rotate as well I can undo oops you can see that straight St there because I have enabled finger mode I need to enable finger mode because if I don't do that the pen will not work here on the pen display if you're wondering what would happen if you have both devices in vertical orientation it's going to look all right here with the Android device however it's going to look like this on the pen display it's not going to rotate the bottom line is this if you want to use the pen display with an Android device make sure your Android device can output video signal all right to conclude the drawing performance of this this pen display is excellent the colors are accurate the brightness definitely can be higher and that is the main limitation with this pen display so I'll would say this is good for beginners who don't have much budget and due to the small display I don't feel like this is nice to work on for a long periods of time so if you are looking to draw for long periods of time I highly recommend you stretch your budget slightly and go with a larger pen display 13 in or larger having said that UGI is currently selling their u600 pen display on Amazon.com for $259 and there's A1 to $110 coupon code to bring the price down to $69 or $159 for 15.4 in pen display now this pen display is a no reals pen display with no hot keys but the drawing performance is really good so if you can get this with the coupon for less than $180 us um this is really worth the money this is my review for that pen display and I measured a maximum brightness of 22 nits for that pen display the ugu 1600 it's a really good one by the way if you guys are interested to buy any pen display do consider using the FL links that I have for you in the video description below to support me and the work that I do here on this YouTube channel thanks for watching see you again bye
