4 Best Drawing Tablets for the 2020–2021 School Year

The New Guide to Note-Taking in Online Education

Aroshi Ghosh

Published in

Student Spectator

4 min readSep 8, 2020

Now that the school year has started, many of us are wondering: How are we going to work virtually?

Many amenities such as whiteboards, smartboards, or document cameras have been used in the past to help teachers draw diagrams, show work, or explain concepts without the constructs of typing in a Word document. However, now that many schools across the US are conducting lessons virtually, these tools are no longer applicable. It may seem like a small inconvenience considering that this is a pandemic, however, being able to draw out ideas is extremely important to teaching and learning. That is why I compiled this list of 4 affordable and easy to use drawing tablets.

Disclaimer: None of the tablets mentioned below have a screen/monitor as those are very expensive (at least 300 dollars and can go up to 1000). Instead, all of these tablets can be hooked up to a computer, and your computer monitor shows your work. It has a bit of a learning curve, but after a few tries, it becomes second nature.

There are a couple of factors to consider when choosing a drawing tablet such as pen pressure sensitivity, screen active area, and portability. However, before we get into the details, you need to figure out why you want a drawing tablet.

Most people get them for 2 different reasons:

Note-taking in class
Digital art

If you are getting a drawing tablet purely for note-taking in school, you want to get a tablet with a medium screen active area (6 in x 4 in works best) while still being light enough to carry around in a backpack. However, you do not need to think about the pen pressure sensitivity as much. A few tablets to consider are the XP-PEN G640 Digital Pad 6x4 Inch Pen Tablet or the Huion Inspiroy H640P Graphics 6 x 4 Inch Drawing Tablet (More details below).

If you want to use your drawing tablet for digital art, it is important to make sure you have at least 8192 levels of pressure sensitivity so that you can get smooth lines that mimic brush strokes or sketching. Additionally, a large screen active area (10 in by 6.25 in) is extremely useful for digital art, however, portability is not much of an issue since you will not be carrying it around. My preferred tablets are Huion H610 Pro V2 10 by 6.25 Inch Graphic Drawing Tablet or XP-PEN Deco 01 V2 Graphics Tablet 10x6.25 Inch Drawing Pen Tablet (More details below).

Overall, all of the drawing tablets mentioned are relatively cheap ($40–70) and I would highly suggest investing in one during the virtual school year.