Huion New 1060 Plus (2048) Review

Warning:
This review is now well over 1 year old and may contain outdated information.
I suggest looking for a newer review if possible.

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Huion New 1060 Plus (2048)

The Huion New 1060 Plus (2048 version) that I have is now discontinued.
The 2048 version uses different drivers from the Huion New 1060 Plus (8192 version) which has replaced the older 2048 version. The tablet is the exact same, but the 8192 version uses upgraded drivers. My review does not cover the 8192 drivers, but they are just as good, if not better, than the 2048 drivers.
I found this out recently, but the 2048 version cannot use the 8192 drivers, so people with the older 2048 version will need to use the older non-8192 drivers.

After getting to test the premium Huion Inspiroy Q11K tablet, I was curious about how good the more averagely priced Huion tablets were so I bought this Huion New 1060 Plus when I saw it on sale on Amazon. (By averagely priced, I mean priced around the same as the small Wacom Intuos.)
The main reason why I chose this tablet is because of how many expresskeys there were, and because I wanted to see how convenient soft keys (the numbers along the top) are. I also wanted to see the extent of the older Huion drivers because I only got to see their newest drivers with the Q11K.
Anyways, on to the review!

Please note!
-I am not a Mac or Linux user!! I only tested this tablet on Windows 8 and Windows 10.
-The cable direction for this tablet is not suited to left-handed people!
-Prices may have changed since I wrote this review.
-Check when a review was written. Some aspects may improve or change over time, so it is in your best interest to concentrate on reviews which are less than 1 year old.

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Table of contents

• How good is this tablet?
• Important specifications
• What’s in the box?
• Tablet drivers
• The drawing experience!
• Conclusion
• Places to buy the tablet

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How good is this tablet?

Design and build quality: Excellent!
Tablet drivers: Quite good!
Drawing experience: Very comfortable!

Overall: A good buy for 90 USD!

My verdict:
*Note, the cable on this tablet may not suit left-handed people!
-If you are considering this as your first graphic tablet, I recommend getting this instead of the “beginner” Wacom Intuos any day of the week. This tablet is around the same price as the Intuos but it has a much bigger active area space while drawing just as well.
-If you are experienced with tablets, this is most certainly a worthy alternative to the Intuos Pro if you don’t need the following features of the Intuos Pro: pen tilt/rotation, multi-touch, and touch wheel. It has the quality of a premium tablet and a whole bunch of customizable expresskeys if that’s your thing.

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Important specifications

Price: 89.99 USD (when this review was written) Amazon.com
Active Area: 10 x 6.25 inches
Pen Type: Recharging
Pen Buttons: 2 side buttons, no eraser
Pen Pressure: 2048
Pen Tilt Sensitivity: None
Expresskeys: 12 buttons, 16 soft keys
Multi-touch: No
Special features: 8GB built-in USB memory

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What’s in the box?

The Huion New 1060 Plus comes in a slick and simple white box with a picture of the tablet on it.

 

The things that come in the box:

• Tablet
• Pen
• Pen stand
• Tablet cable (USB type-A to Micro-USB)
• Pen charging cable
• Pen nib replacements x4
• Pen cap
• Tablet bag
• Artist glove
• User manual
• “Thank you” card

 

The tablet has a nice overall design with a simple flat area for drawing. I was surprised at the overall size of the tablet at first, but it should fit easily into most backpacks or laptop bags.

The surface of this tablet has a smooth design with enough tooth to not feel like you’re slipping while drawing. I think this is the best texture to prevent nib and tablet wear while giving you a decent amount of control over your lines.

The back of the tablet has the usual information sticker and 4 rubber feet. The rubber feet do a proper job of holding your tablet in place while drawing.

The front and back edges of the tablet are beveled and allow for comfortable usage of the tablet.

The expresskeys on this tablet are fantastic to use. They have enough resistance so that you don’t accidentally press them, but not so much resistance that they’re hard to press. They’re also fairly quiet, only giving enough of a click to let you know that you’ve actually pressed it.

The softkeys are a feature I have been interested in for a fair bit. You use them by setting functions to them and pressing the softkeys with your pen on the tablet. If you have 16 softkeys, you basically have 16 more expresskeys. However, that turned out to be quite a naive way of thinking.

In reality, the softkeys are very hard to use and actually slowed down my workflow a fair bit.
There are two main reasons why softkeys are not as good as they might seem:
1) You must look down to use them. No matter how practiced you are at using them, they are hard to hit without looking down. There are no indicators on the screen for them, so looking down to press them is the only option you have.
2) You have to memorize which number is what function. Of course this is a much lesser problem than the first, but is still a problem nonetheless. Memorizing 16 different functions does not seem plausible for the average person, and even if you memorize them, you still have to look down from the screen every time you want to use them.

The fact that the softkeys aren’t use-able isn’t a problem because you can just use the tablet without them, and the tablet is still fantastic for its price even without them. I just wanted to point out that the concept of softkeys is flawed and should be reworked to fit better into an artists workflow.

The tablet has a pen holder on the side. It’s nice that they tried, but the wrap is actually too loose to hold the pen properly so you will lose your pen easily if you use it.

You may or may not have noticed, but this tablet does not come with a driver installation CD. The reason for that is because this tablet has a built-in 8GB USB drive and the installation driver is on there!
All you have to do is plug your tablet in and run the installer from inside the tablet’s USB drive. However, I still recommend going to the Huion site and downloading the latest drivers from there instead.

The idea of the tablet doubling as a carry around memory stick is interesting, but it is not useful for most people.
The only situation where it could be useful is when you frequently move your tablet between two different computers, and being able to save your art files on the tablet you are moving should be quite convenient for moving files between computers.
Aside from that situation, this feature will most likely be useless for you. However, I have no complaints about having this feature as this tablet is still very cheap for the quality you are getting.

This is the standard Huion recharging pen which boasts 800 hours (33 days) of continuous usage on a single charge. I can’t confirm that number, but I have been drawing with this tablet for at least a week by now and the battery hasn’t run out if that means anything to you.

Anywho, the pen has a very straight shape with no bulges or tapers to catch your fingers. However, this is made up for by the hard rubber grip which has a few grooves cut into it to allow for a decent hold.

 

The pen has the usual 2 side buttons which are fairly easy to use due to how far they stick out from the pen. The pen actually feels the tiniest bit awkward to hold due to the fact that there’s absolutely no bulges to catch your fingers, but once you find the right spot to hold it, there are no problems with the drawing experience at all.

Like most recharging pens, the top of the pen has the port for the charging cable.

 

The pen stand only has grooves for putting your pen on it sideways and no hole in the middle for standing your pen up straight. Not a problem, but I prefer being able to stand the pen.

The pen stand itself is super light and made completely of plastic. Since the base is also made of plastic, it has absolutely no grip and slides around really easily. In all honesty, I think you may be better off just not using the pen stand.

The four pen nib replacements are inside of the pen stand with the pen nib remover. Four does not seem like a lot, but it should last you a decent length of time on the smooth surface that this tablet has, and Huion’s replacement nibs are not very pricey compared to Wacom’s anyways.

 

This tablet comes with a pen cap so you can put the pen in your bag without accidentally turning it on and wasting battery life. The pen does turn itself off automatically after 5 minutes of inactivity, but it turns on very easily with slight pen pressure.

Many people complain about how easy it is to lose this cap, and I can see why considering the fact that you can’t even attach it to the top of the pen when you’re not using it. But just treat it as you would any pen cap which you can’t attach to the pen and you shouldn’t be losing it.

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Tablet drivers

The tablet driver are extremely easy to install. You don’t even need to have your tablet plugged in to install them! Just go download the latest version from huiontablet.com and remove all other tablet drivers you have on your computer before installing it.

Although this tablet comes with the driver installer on the tablet USB drive, I still suggest getting the latest drivers off of the Huion site.

 

For the Pen Setting section, you can set the pen buttons to basically anything except double click. When you click the Keyboard Key function, it brings up a window with every keyboard key I can think of, so it is completely customizable.
You can also move the pen pressure curve to be softer or firmer. I found the middle to be the best for me.

For the Screen Setting section, you pick the monitor which you want the tablet to map to. You can make changes to the specific screen ratio in the Advanced Setting section below.

For the Advanced Setting section, the Pen Pressure Test button brings up a small canvas to test your pen pressure.

 

The Advanced Setting button brings up another window for setting all your expresskey and softkey functions. It also decides the ratio of the tablet that maps to the screen. I suggest using the Screen Ratio button to get the proper horizontal and vertical motions on your screen.
The expresskeys and softkeys are completely configurable to keyboard keys, but you cannot map anything else to them. So no mouse clicks or switch screen functions are available for the expresskeys and softkeys.

The Import and Export buttons are used to import or export your saved profiles.

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The drawing experience!

This tablet gave me a fantastic drawing experience which was very similar to the premium Huion Inspiroy Q11K tablet. In other words, it was extremely good! The smoothness of the tablet was great because it didn’t feel like I was grinding the pen nib, and it has just enough texture to prevent me from slipping. For anyone who expects a paper texture, this is probably not what they want, but this smooth texture is so much better for making a graphic tablet last that much longer.

 

Huion New 1060 Plus (2048)

I only test my tablets on Clip Studio Paint because that’s all I use. You should contact Huion support directly if you want to know if the tablet is compatible with the drawing program you use, but most major drawing programs should be compatible. Their customer support is also very kind so there’s no need to be afraid of contacting them directly.

The stroke control for this tablet is very good and it tapers very well for both short and long strokes. I can certainly see some wobble when doing slow lines with a ruler, but it is not particularly bad and didn’t affect my drawing at all.

The expresskeys on this tablet feel absolutely fantastic, and I would surely recommend this tablet to someone who is looking to make use of the expresskeys on their tablet. The softkeys are a good idea, but unfortunately they are not very convenient. If someone can figure out a way to use them without having to look down, then they would be very worthwhile, but as they are right now, they are just decorations on the tablet.

The cord placement is very fitting for a right-handed artist, but it seems like it would get in the way for a left-handed artist. There is also the fact that the soft keys are along the bottom of the tablet if used in left-handed mode and I doubt that makes them any easier to use than in right-handed mode.

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Conclusion

This is a fantastic tablet for its price of 90 USD on Amazon.com. It is basically the same price as a Wacom Intuos draw, except that this tablet has a much bigger active area which will give you better line control. It even has 12 completely programmable and great feeling expresskeys.

If a beginner digital artist has enough money to consider an Intuos, I would suggest that they get this instead. The extra active area space is much more worthwhile than getting the Wacom brand name, especially since the quality of this Huion tablet is really good.

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Places to buy the tablet

Huion Store | Amazon.com | Amazon.ca
People living in other regions should check their regions Amazon or see if the Huion Store ships to them.

My version of the Huion New 1060 Plus is being discontinued and is being replaced with a 8192 pen pressure version for the exact same price. The links above lead to the 8192 pen pressure version.

If you have any questions about the tablet, feel free to ask me!

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