Last week, Wacom came out with their very first OLED pen display, allowing you to do your hand-drawn creative work on a screen with OLED’s precise color reproduction and intense contrast. It looked really nice. As is usually the case in various tech industries, it doesn’t take long before competing brands get in on the same action. As such, this week we’re seeing the announcement of the Xencelabs Pen Display 16.
That’s right, Xencelabs is coming out with their own OLED pen display and it brings all the same conveniences found in Wacom’s recent OLED release. Except, with a bigger 16-inch screen compared to Wacom’s 13.3-inch panel, making it a better choice if you like doing your drawing and sketches on an even bigger screen.
The Xencelabs Pen Display 16 is equipped with a 16-inch OLED panel with 4K resolution (3,840 x 2,160 pixels), a 100,000:1 contrast ratio, and 1.07 billion primary colors, allowing it to cover 99 percent of the REC 709 color space, 99 percent of sRGB, and 98 percent of Adobe RGB. According to the outfit, the screen is optically bonded to completely eliminate parallax (where the stylus is slightly off from the cursor’s position) and create no distracting effect, while a specially-designed drawing panel on top minimizes glare for maximum clarity in brightly lit environments.
An integrated heat sink in the back allows the device to cool down without using any fans, eliminating any noise that can end up very distracting when you’re trying to focus on a task. It’s also very slim at just 12mm, with large bezels on the sides, making it easy to hold in hand if you prefer drawing in that position. Of course, you can always purchase the optional stand, which can tilt it at one of two comfortable angles (18 degrees or 32 degrees).
The Xencelabs Pen Display 16 is compatible with the outfit’s Quick Keys remote (available separately), which features a large dial with four preset modes and eight buttons with up to five sets of presets each, giving you 40 different shortcuts at your fingertips. As with the outfit’s previous releases, this can attach to the side bezel of the pen display, ensuring it can integrate seamlessly into your workflow. It also comes with two models of the outfit’s stylus pens, the 3 Button Pen v2 and the slim Thin Pen v2. both of which feature built-in erasers, customizable buttons, and a tilt range of up to 60 degrees. They also include pen clips for attaching both pens to the side of the drawing tablet.
For non-drawing use, it comes with a Virtual Tablet Mode that lets you use it as a touch control panel on the connected PC, similar to an additional display. The device requires just a single USB-C cable connection to your PC, so you won’t have to deal with a mess of three different cables on the desk at the same time. There’s also an optional 10-bit hub for those who prefer to use it with HDMI or DisplayPort.
Want one? The Xencelabs Pen Display 16 is available now, priced at $1,249.
