Huion Kamvas Pro 13 (2.5K) review: glossy, svelte and kind to your money belt

Huion Kamvas Pro 13 (2.5k): One-minute review

The Huion Kamvas Pro 13 (2.5K) is a robust 373.5 x 229.1 x 10mm pen display offering a gorgeous QHD 2.5k display housed in a robust, well-constructed frame. With an active drawing area of 286.5 x 179mm, there’s a good amount of room to play with, too.

As with many other Huion products, the Kamvas Pro 13 (2.5k) is comfortably middle of the road. While Wacom focuses most of its attention on high-quality kit fit for professional studios and XPPen caters to newbies and those on a budget, Huion’s products walk the line between the experienced and inexperienced, resulting in some of the best drawing tablets you can buy. However, unlike some devices that boast a ‘Pro’ moniker, the Kamvas Pro 13 (2.5k) actually feels like a viable professional-grade option, certainly for semi-professionals and those just starting out at a professional level. 

As such, products like the Kamvas Pro 13 (2.5k) are the perfect option for those ready to upskill and upgrade their setup and those who need the full range of professional features. It has 7 programmable keys, 8,192 pressure levels, and 145% sRGB color gamut, meaning it’s not offering anything above and beyond market averages in some of its specs, but the QHD, 2560 x 1600 resolution screen most definitely helps to up its value.

The screen grants a decent amount of resistance, offering a pleasant drawing experience that’s not quite Wacom-good but a marked improvement on cheaper products. Its stylus has love-it-or-hate-it vibes. Personally, I enjoyed the thickness of the pen, its tapered end, and its tactile buttons, but other users seem to dislike its shape and feel.

Most of the gripes I did have with the Huion Kamvas Pro 13 were pretty surface-level; the plug isn’t included and the octopus cable is, as with many pen displays, unwieldy and irritating. Overall, though, it’s a fantastic piece of kit and fills a previously gaping hole for enthusiasts and semi-professionals in the pen display market.

Huion Kamvas Pro 13 (2.5k): Price and availability

• List price:  $399 / £379 / AU$899 

Huion comfortably occupies the mid-range price bracket for drawing tablets; not quite the premium, professional finish of Wacom products, but more robust and advanced than XPPen’s budget-friendly alternatives. 

Its $399 / £379 / AU$599 price tag is great for such a well-finished product, and you can also size up to the 16-inch model for $599 / £529 / AU$899. For easier comparison, the budget-friendly and less well-built XPPen Artist Pro 15.6 is $369.99 / £399.99 / AU$599.99.  It’s available from the official online Huion store and other online retailers such as Amazon.

As well as the tablet itself, the price includes the battery-free stylus, a robust tablet stand, a drawing glove, a cloth, three extra regular nibs, and three felt nibs, as well as the octopus cable. It’s important to reiterate that it does not come with a plug for some reason.

• Value: 4.5 / 5

Huion Kamvas Pro 13 (2.5k): Specs

Huion Kamvas Pro 13 (2.5k): Design

• Very glossy and elegant
• Divisive stylus
• Great build quality - especially the stand

For me, design is one of the standout features of the Huion Kamvas Pro 13. Pen displays are generally basic looking but, at worst, can be clunky and tacky-looking. Instead, the Kamvas Pro 13 is slick and glossy, and while it's not quite as premium-feeling as more expensive tablets, it's robust and well-made and its design is comprehensive and well thought through.

Starting with the 373.5 x 229.1 x 10mm tablet itself; it’s super lightweight at 1kg and has a 286.5 x 179mm active drawing area. Bordering the screen is a glossy plastic casing with classy diagonal stripes to give it a slightly more premium feel. The back case is brushed aluminum. Along the side of the screen are the 7 tactile programmable keys, which have a satisfying click to them. There’s only one other button - the on-off button, which lives near the two USB-C ports and is held down to launch the on-screen display settings.

The etched, laminated screen is a little prone to smudging but feels well constructed, and in my time with the tablet, I didn’t notice any signs of scratching. It has an anti-glare finish, and as with other devices this can cause a slight grain (I noticed it particularly on white), but it’s fairly easy to ignore once you’re in the throes of artistry.

While there’s no VESA mount, the back of the tablet has four rubber feet for stability when using it flat on a surface, and the Huion Kamvas Pro 13 also comes with a fantastic stand. It’s one of the best I’ve used that comes included with a tablet, with the same brushed aluminum and black accents as the tablet and a variable tilt of 14.5 to 45 degrees. It’s super sturdy and well thought out and compacts easily for travel. 

The only drawback in terms of the Huion Kamvas Pro 13’s design was the short octopus cable. My desk is pretty large, and if I want to plug the tablet into my under-desk PC rather than my laptop, I have to commit to moving around screens and other desk clutter just to reach the ports needed - and that’s without factoring in the distance from a power supply.

• Design: 4.5 / 5

Huion Kamvas Pro 13 (2.5k): Performance

• Plug-and-play 
• Good drawing experience
• Smooth workflows thanks to programmable keys

On test, the Huion Kamvas Pro 13 was a real pleasure to work with. To set up, all you have to do is install Huion’s drivers and you’re ready to go - and you’ll be glad to hear they’re easy to use. There are plenty of configuration options if you like to fiddle with the settings, and you can also modify your preferences for different programs. 

This pen display offers a good drawing experience, but I wouldn’t say it’s a great one. The screen doesn’t quite offer enough resistance for my liking, and the aforementioned grain caused by the anti-glare finish is taxing on the eye sometimes. If you don’t often work around white space, it would be barely noticeable, but when I was working on a project designing some stickers with ample white space, I found it a little irritating at times.

However, the screen is otherwise an absolute glory to work with. There is next-to-no parallax or lag, lines are straight and with no noticeable jitter. It’s fantastically bright, with a glorious 145% sRGB color gamut, and its QHD resolution makes for vibrant, delightful colors and deep, true blacks. It’s also brilliantly responsive. Honestly, the only thing the Huion Kamvas Pro 13 could include to hit the ball out of the park would be a touch screen, but for its price range it’s near-perfect. 

I used a variety of programs to test the Huion Kamvas Pro 13 and found it to be consistent across all of them. 

Thanks to the 7 programmable buttons, the Huion Kamvas Pro 13 (2.5k) is a delight for speeding up workflows. Some tablets do come with more buttons, but personally, I never find myself needing more than this as an enthusiast.

• Performance: 4.5 / 5

Huion Kamvas Pro 13 (2.5k): Stylus

• Battery-free
• Tapered end 
• 8,192 pressure levels and 60-degree tilt

The Kamvas Pro 13 (2.5k) comes with the 14g battery-free Huion PW517 stylus, using Huion PenTech 3.0 technology to offer the manufacturer's most advanced drawing experience yet. 

With 8,192 pressure levels and a 60-degree tilt the stylus is responsive and accurate. Its nib is stable and not scratchy, and the Huion Kamvas Pro 13 (2.5k) comes with three felt nibs to offer better friction. Having never used nibs like this before, I absolutely loved having the option to switch to these. 

Personally, I love the all-black stylus design, but I know from researching online that its tapered end is a bit divisive. To me, it felt ergonomic, with its two programmable buttons perfectly positioned and surrounded with non-slip rubber; some cheaper styluses have easily misclicked buttons, but not this Huion pen. The end of the stylus doesn’t have an eraser, but it is tapered, which personally felt more comfortable and lightweight to me than other styluses I’ve tried.

• Stylus: 4.5 / 5

Should I buy the Huion Kamvas Pro 13 (2.5k)?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Huion Kamvas Pro 13 (2.5k): Report card

Also consider...

XPPen Artist 15.6 Pro

For a similar price, you can get something a bit larger than the Huion Kamvas Pro 13, but its build quality isn’t as good and its screen doesn’t feel nearly as high quality. It does have a slightly better cable setup, though. 

Read our full XPPen Artist 15.6 Pro review

iPad Air (2022)

The iPad Air is a general-use tablet, but with many programs running seamlessly thanks to its M1 chip, it’s a real boon for creatives.  It’s more expensive than the Huion Kamvas Pro 13, but you do have the benefit of it being a multi-purpose device rather than just a drawing surface. 

Read our full iPad Air (2022) review

How I tested the Huion Kamvas Pro 13 (2.5k)

• I used the Huion Kamvas Pro 13 (2.5k) for 3 weeks
• I tested using photo editing and drawing software 

I worked on a couple of creative projects for three weeks with the Huion Kamvas Pro 13 (2.5k) using a variety of programs including Adobe Creative Cloud (Photoshop and Illustrator), Krita, and GIMP. 

I stress-tested its performance, testing both fine detail work and general-use applications. I tested all of its display settings, left-handed mode, and drivers to see its ease of use. I also tested the stylus for its tilt and pressure functions, testing its line performance with different brushes. 

Read more about how we test

• First reviewed May 2023