Official Review Hardware Updated

Review cover Veikk Viola L Pen Tablet (Hardware)
Official GBAtemp Review

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Graphic tablets are fantastic for creating content, so let's see if the Veikk Viola L Pen Tablet get my creative juices flowing!

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Imagine trying to draw something, anything with a mouse, or worse, a trackpad, on your PC or laptop. Now imagine using a totally intuitive pen to produce fluid works of art instead. The Veikk Viola L Drawing Tablet could be the 10" x 6" matte surface input method of your dreams if you're a budding artist or animator as it offers a battery-less pen, four keyboard-style customizable shortcut buttons, and a dial!

At $46.95 at the moment (with 28% off offer) on their main site, this drawing tablet has a lot of potential thanks to the 8192 levels of pressure sensitivity and the battery-less P05 stylus that also offers 60-degree tilt for freedom of movement, and houses in itself an additional rocker button for additional functionality!

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Supports All Major OS's!

Drawing with this tablet is a breeze, and thankfully it supports all major 2D and 3D software packages you could possibly want straight out of the box. Usually, you have to navigate drivers, apps, and all sorts of kerfuffle in order to simply start using a device like this, but Veikk has seen fit to make the device as straightforward as possible. Plug and play using any of the supplied combinations of USB-C cables and the nifty USB-A to Micro or USB-C adaptors and you're good to go!

In the box, you also get the nib removal tool, a handful of nibs, a strange two-fingered glove to facilitate smoother gliding across the surface, a stylus case, and spare keycaps to allow you to change them from black to orange, or to all black or to all orange depending on how you want it to look. The keys themselves are tactile and clicky, and give you the feel of a keyboard!

Adding additional customization settings comes via the Veikk app (HERE) and installing the app/driver package. The app allows you to specify which apps do what with each of the buttons on the stylus or the tablet, lets you test the sensitivity of the nib, and allows you to swap the pen from pen to mouse mode for ease of input.

Setting up the dial you can really do what you want with it in terms of functionality. Setting it to lower or increase zoom, navigate layers, or even swap out brushes on the fly is very easy to implement. The dial has a clicky feel to it, and for all intense purposes, it works for giving you more freedom to personalise your experience, but it's more gimmick than it is a revolutionary design feature.

Pen mode scales the tablet to the corners of your screen, allowing you to simply touch in the corresponding place on the tablet that represents the place on your screen, it takes a little while to get used to, but it means you don't have to continually swipe the mouse over and over to get from one position to the other on screen.

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Performs Under Pressure

I found that my average pressure input was barely 1500-3400 range when sketching and colouring, but if you were to exert more pressure you would cause darker swathes of colour, or more harsh lines to be produced. When doing watercolour effects it's best to opt for lower-pressure lines that flow and build up layers whereas doing a drawing with a charcoal effect brush needs more pressure applied in places in order to achieve thicker heavier strokes and gain more contrast across the image.

One thing I noticed that is absent from the P05 Stylus is an eraser function in the end piece. Though it's not there it is very easy to add an erase button to either the tablet or the pen depending on preference to compensate, though it would have been super handy and perhaps more intuitive to have that already built in. The pen itself is exceptionally responsive and honestly, I felt zero latency between what I was doing compared to what I was seeing on the screen. I was very impressed with the overall granularity and accuracy of the pen, and though it feels cheap and cheerful, it really outperforms the sum of its parts.

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Generous Features And Huge Value

Having used Wacom/Bamboo back in the day I was keen to see if the Veikk was a competitively priced device given its features and relatively unknown name in Europe. I found that the 10" form factor and 8192 levels of pressure sensitivity were extremely generous in the sub $50 tablet market, with only the Wacom Intuous Small Black offering a 7" surface and 4092 levels of pressure for a similar outlay. The only other tablet I found that offers virtually the same stats as the Viola L was the XP-PEN Star06C which touts the same 10" size and identical 8192 levels of pressure, but touted 6 programmable buttons, though its price is a firm $69.99 on amazon at the moment.

I firmly believe that the Veikk Viola L is an exceptionally competitive and intuitive product that is incredibly well designed and would be easy to recommend to anyone after grabbing such a device to enhance their creativity on PC/Mac/Chrome/Android and more. The only caveat for use on Android is that there is no app to customise the buttons, which means basic input and functionality are fine, but really personalising your set-up is a little lacking at the moment.

Verdict

What We Liked ...
  • Lightweight and easy to plug and play
  • No charging is required!
  • 10" x 6" is a decent-sized canvas
  • Huge bang for your buck
  • It also works on Android & Chrome devices
  • Virtually no latency!
What We Didn't Like ...
  • The plastic finish feels flimsy
  • No dedicated app for mobile devices
9
out of 10

Overall

The Veikk Viola is an affordable input device made with designers in mind. The sheer ease of use alone makes this a must-buy for anyone into drawing or sketching on your home computer, but the product itself could do with a little bump in materials used to really set itself apart from the crowd.
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samcambolt270
Personally, never been a big fan of veikk. I've used two veikk tablets and both developed problems within a few months. I'd suggest huion for a budget screen tablet and xp-pen for a budget non-screen tablet. Both have their strengths and weaknesses but feel more premium and have more robust components than veikk for a similar price.
 
orangy57
for only 50 bucks that's pretty cool!! I paid the same price for my huion h610 back in 2015 and its really been abused over the years, it's finally on its last legs. If the drivers are any good and it has a left handed mode i might check this one out on the inevitable day when i need to buy a replacement.

having an eraser on the pen isn't really necessary imo, binding tablet buttons with your off-hand for undo and eraser is even quicker than flipping over the pen with your hand
 
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