Huion Inspiroy H1060P Review

(May 24, 2019) Update: I have updated this review with the new Drawing Tests section which I have recently started doing in my reviews.

The conclusion of this review is unchanged. I still recommend this tablet wholeheartedly to everyone.

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Huion Inspiroy H1060P

Tilt Firmware Update – For people with the non-tilt H1060P
The tilt induction function is a upgraded function of the device. If you order the H1060P from our official online shop, you will receive the upgraded model so that you can use this function directly. If you order it from other channels like Amazon, or if you have already owned one H1060P, you can send your serial number, order number and your OS version to service@huion.com and they will send you a firmware upgrade package. Follow their guidelines to install it and then you can also use the tilt induction function.

The Huion Inspiroy H1060P is Huion’s newest tablet which features the same base tablet design as the previous Huion New 1060 Plus, but it uses a battery-free pen instead of a recharging pen.

Just so you know, the Huion New 1060 Plus was actually my favourite screen-less tablet out of everything I had tried up to now, but after trying the XP-Pen Deco 03, the title of my favourite tablet was shared between those two because they both have their strong and weak points.
The only thing that was holding back the Huion New 1060 Plus from being the “best” for me was actually the recharging pen, so when I saw that there’s a new version with a battery-free pen, I just had to get it and test it for myself.
I will emphasize though that a recharging pen is certainly more than good enough for drawing, but it’s just simply nicer not worrying about the battery getting weaker later down the road (like how a phone battery gets weaker over time).

I bought it off huiontablet.com because there was a first month free shipping promotion going on, and it arrived within a week. I’ve got to say I’m impressed by the shipping speed of huiontablet.com. If only the shipping didn’t cost so much for countries outside of China when there’s no free shipping promotion.

I’ll be honest that I went into testing this tablet with some skepticism about how good it’ll be because the Huion H640P which uses the same battery-free pen wasn’t exactly perfect. But let me tell you now, I was quite impressed by the Huion H1060P.

Anyways, sorry for the long preface. Let’s get on with the review.

Please note!
-I am not a Mac or Linux user!! I only tested this tablet on Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.
-The cable direction on this tablet is not suited to left-handed people! You can most likely work around it by using your own straight micro-USB cable though.
-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?
• Specifications at a glance
• What’s in the box?
• Tablet drivers
• Drawing tests
• The drawing experience!
• Conclusion
• Places to buy the tablet

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How good is this tablet?

Design choices: Mostly perfect!
-Nitpicks: Direction of L-shaped cable, soft keys seem useless
Hardware quality: Quite sturdy!
-Nitpicks:
Tablet drivers: Well featured!
-Nitpicks: No anti-ghosting on shortcut buttons
Drawing test results: Really good results!
-Nitpicks:
Actual drawing experience: Fantastic!
-Nitpicks:

Overall: A very worthwhile buy for 100 USD.

My verdict:
-If you are a beginner, I can wholeheartedly recommend this over the same priced Wacom Intuos. It works really well and the comfort is on par with the high-end Wacom Intuos Pros. If you have 100 USD to spend on a small low-end Intuos, I would most certainly recommend spending your 100 USD on this tablet instead.
-If you are an experienced tablet user, I wholeheartedly recommend considering this tablet to see if it suits your needs.

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Specifications at a glance

Price: 99.99 USD (when this review was written)
Active Area: 10 x 6.25 inches
Pen Type: Battery-free
Pen Buttons: 2 side buttons, no eraser
Pen Pressure: 8192
Pen Tilt Sensitivity: Yes, +-60 levels
Expresskeys: 12 buttons, 16 soft keys
Multi-touch: No

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What’s in the box?

The tablet comes in a nice simple white box with a cool eagle painting on the front. This white box with cool drawing design has been the trend for all of Huion’s Inspiroy line tablet boxes.

The things that come in the box:

• Huion H1060P tablet
• Battery-free pen
• Pen stand
• Tablet cable (USB type-A to Micro-USB)
• Pen nib replacements x8
• User manual
• Driver installation CD shaped instruction card
• Warranty card
• “Thank you” card

Before talking about the tablet, I would like to point out to you that you will need internet to download the latest drivers from Huion’s website.

I support this trend of not including a driver installation CD because quite a few beginners will mistakenly use the outdated drivers on the CD instead of getting the latest drivers (with the least bugs) from Huion’s website.

The tablet has a fairly simple design with most of the tablet surface being one flat piece of smooth but somewhat textured plastic. The tablet itself is fairly big, but it should be small enough to fit snugly in all standard sized backpacks and bags.

There is almost no flex whatsoever when doing a simple twist test by gripping both ends of the tablet and twisting.

The surface of the tablet has a fairly smooth finish, although it does have some texture to prevent it from feeling like drawing on glass. If you want a rougher texture, then this is probably not what you’re looking for, but the way I see it, this smooth texture is much more ideal.
One reason is because it basically never wears your pen nibs, and the other reason is because a roughly textured tablet will become smooth after continuous use anyways. This is proven by all the Wacom Intuos Pro (PTH-651) users who wore their rough tablet textures smooth and made it as smooth and shiny as a mirror though normal use.
It’s going to happen for any textured tablet, so why not just start with the smoother texture in the first place?

One thing you should do right away with this tablet is take a microfiber cloth and lightly clean the surface of the tablet before drawing. I’m not sure why, but there was a bit of a scratchy feel to the surface before I wiped it off once (I noticed the same thing with my Huion New 1060 Plus), so I assume there’s probably some dust or something from the finish that you’ll want to wipe off.

Did you know?
The texture sheet on the Huion H1060P is actually removable and can be replaced. You can purchase a replacement texture sheet from huiontablet.com at: Tablet Surface Cover
This means that you can just replace the texture if you accidentally scratch or damage the surface of your tablet instead of having to buy a whole new tablet.

The whole time that I had this tablet, I had absolutely no idea about this feature. I’d never read about it anywhere either.
Huion should really advertise this more!

The back of the tablet has the usual rubber feet and information sticker. The rubber feet have no problems holding the tablet in place.

The front and back edge of the tablet are beveled to give your wrist a comfortable place to rest on. It actually does make your drawing experience that slight bit more comfortable for longer sessions.
I thought rounded edges were a given for every tablet until I got the XP-Pen Deco 03 which didn’t have rounded edges. If you put your tablet along the edge of your table like I do and your elbow is lower than your desk while drawing, those edges can really start hurting your wrist after a while.

The expresskeys are simply fantastic to use, and these are my absolute favourite so far. They click nicely and easily, and they aren’t obnoxiously loud. If you’re looking for a tablet with lots of expresskeys, this is the one to go for.

One thing to note is that Huion shortcut keys do not have anti-ghosting capabilities. In other words, you cannot use two buttons at the same time. This will not matter in most cases, but you should keep this in mind if you think it affects you.

The numbers along the top of the tablet are the soft keys, buttons which you can only press with your pen. It’s like having an extra 16 expresskeys, but in reality, it’s not as useful as physical expresskeys.

There are two main reasons why soft keys 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 tap with your pen without looking down. There are no indicators on the screen for them, so looking down to press them is the only option you have. This is bad for your workflow because you have to look away from your canvas.
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 is not particularly easy, 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 soft keys aren’t use-able isn’t a problem because you can just use the tablet without them, and the tablet is still fantastic even without them. It’s just important to note that the concept of soft keys is flawed and should be reworked to fit better into an artists workflow.

This tablet uses an L-shaped micro-USB cable.

You cannot change the cable direction, so it may be less suitable for left-handed people, but as you can see, you can use any micro-USB cable that you have on hand instead of the included L-shaped one.
I wish that Huion could use a USB type-C port instead so that it’s reversible for left-handed people, but using your own micro-USB cable should suffice for the time being if you need to.

The little cloth flap on the side of the tablet is meant to be a pen holder. Unlike with the Huion New 1060 Plus where the pen easily falls out, it is actually use-able on the Huion H1060P because the pen actually stays in the cloth due to the rubber grip of the pen. However, it does still feel a bit loose.

This slot on the expresskeys side of the tablet used to be a micro-SD card reader on the Huion New 1060 Plus. However, on the Huion H1060P they have removed that feature.

I honestly kind of wish they had kept the micro-SD card reader as a bonus feature because they don’t even give you a drawing glove or tablet bag (things that came with the Huion New 1060 Plus as bonuses), but I suppose it doesn’t particularly matter because it doesn’t affect the actual drawing experience at all.
I just preferred the feeling of generosity Huion gave off before with all the extra goodies they included with their tablets.

The Huion H1060P uses the same battery-free pen as the H640P and H950P. It features a wide semi-hard/semi-soft rubber grip which can be said to resemble that of the Wacom Intuos Pro line. It’s rather light for its size, but it in no way feels unbalanced.

Holding this pen feels very comfortable and the comfort is well on par with the way pricier Wacom Intuos Pro pen. It feels good to hold and I’m certainly happy that Huion decided to use these comfortable wide rubber grips for their battery-free pens.

The buttons are flush with the surface of the pen, but they are very easy to find without looking at your pen because of the difference in feel between the rubber grip and the plastic buttons. They also click nicely and are a pleasure to use.

The top of the pen does not have anything. There is no charging hole because it’s battery-free.

The pen stand is a small cone which lets you stand the pen upright or sideways on it. I previously noted in another review that the pen actually can’t stand perfectly straight upright on this stand and thought it was a design defect, but perhaps it was intentional to make it seem like those classy ballpoint pen stands that hold the pens at an angle? Who knows.

The bottom of the pen stand is purely plastic with no rubber, so the pen stand does not have too much grip on hard surfaces. However, the bottom is not completely smooth so it doesn’t actually slide very much.

The inside of the pen stand is where the replacement pen nibs are. The pen nib remover is built into the bottom of the stand with the instructions on how to use it engraved into the plastic on the bottom. But for those who don’t understand the pictures, you stick your pen into the hole, lever it to the side a bit, and pull the nib out. I suggest not doing this unless you have to since this type of pen nib remover is known to scratch the side of the pen nib if you lever it too hard.

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Tablet drivers

Please note:
The latest April 28, 2018 and June 21, 2018 Windows drivers prompt you to give it permissions every single time you log on to your computer. This is not a very big problem, but it is quite a nuisance nonetheless (especially considering the fact that previous drivers did not do this).
Here are some solutions to get rid of that prompt: Huion Drivers – How to make it stop prompting you for permissions every time you log in on Windows 10!

The tablet drivers 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 huion.com and remove all other tablet drivers you have on your computer before installing it.

Once you’ve installed the driver, the icon shows up in your taskbar, and the driver also creates a shortcut on your desktop so you don’t have to go searching for it in your apps.
Correction: The desktop icon only starts the Huion driver software (if it doesn’t run automatically on startup) and clicking it doesn’t actually open the settings screen. To open the settings screen, you will need to click the Huion icon in the system tray (the bottom right portion of your screen). 
If you don’t see the Huion icon in the system tray, it could be automatically hidden by Windows. If so, click on the small white arrow to show all the system tray icons.

Although the installer doesn’t prompt you to restart your computer after it finishes, I wholeheartedly suggesting restarting your computer anyways to allow Windows to properly update the files necessary for the driver to run smoothly.

In the driver, you can configure your tablet expresskeys, pen buttons, pen pressure curve, and work area. There’s also an option to save different profiles, although the save and open buttons are named a bit ambiguously (they’re the import config and export config buttons in the “About” section).

If you see a “Require Admin” button along the bottom of the driver when you first run it, click it to give your driver proper administrator privileges so that it can make changes to system files when necessary. However, I have not had problems running the drivers without clicking it so I’m not sure what it changes.

The Press Keys tab allows you to customize the functions mapped to your expresskeys. As you can see above, the hotkeys menu has keyboard shortcuts, pen clicks, and some “switch” functions available. The drop down menu for the keyboard shortcuts has every keyboard key that I can think of.
The only thing that I notice is missing is the double click function, but I guess it’s pretty easy to just double tap your pen instead so that can’t even be considered a problem.
Edit: Double click is now available in Huion’s drivers.

Like I mentioned before, the Huion shortcut keys do not have anti-ghosting capabilities. In other words, you cannot use two buttons at the same time. This will not matter in most cases, but you should keep this in mind if you think it affects you.
Every button will work at the same time as the pen nib though, including the pen buttons.

The Stylus Pen tab allows you to customize the pen buttons and the pen pressure curve. The pen buttons have the same amount of configuration as the expresskeys.

Usually you will need to uncheck the “Enable Windows Ink” option to prevent Windows Ink from messing with your drawing. That said, some programs such as Photoshop usually do not work if it is not turned on, so play with that option as you see fit.

One limitation of this tablet driver is that the pen buttons cannot be used at the same time as the pen nib click. For example, if you were to assign spacebar (for panning) to the pen button, then you hold down the pen button and press the pen onto the tablet, the result would be a normal pen stroke, not the hand tool for panning as you would expect. It seems the pen nib overrides the pen button command rather than occurring alongside it.
A simple way to remedy this is by assigning both spacebar and left click to the same pen button (because you can do that with the Huion drivers), but this limitation should still be noted.
Edit (July 10, 2018): This limitation has been fixed in the new V14 Huion driver.

The Work Area tab allows you to customize the monitor your tablet is mapped to, and the size of the active area your tablet uses. Pick your monitor from the drop down menu, then click the Full Area button, and then click the Screen Ratio button to properly adjust your tablet area to match your monitor.

There is also the option to rotate your tablet input for left-handed use, but like I mentioned before, the USB-cable direction may be annoying for left-handed users.

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Drawing tests

Huion Inspiroy H1060P

These pen tests are all done with the same settings for both the canvas and the pens. These tests are only done in Clip Studio Paint as that is the only program where I totally understand how to remove all unwanted variables.
If you are worried about whether this tablet will work with your art program, don’t be afraid to contact support to ask them directly.

-The canvas will always be a 3000x3000px 300dpi page (the above test page is a 3000x6000px 300dpi page, so just two pages stuck together).
-The test pens are mostly all 100px linear pressure curve pens. Pen pressure for size and/or opacity is enabled based on the test.
-The slow ruler line test uses a 10px no pen pressure pen to clearly show wobble and jitter. I also use a 50px pen pressure enabled pen to see the visibility of wobble/jitter with pen pressure is enabled.
-The IAF (Initial Activation Force) test uses a 300px linear pressure pen to show the thinnest lines possible, as well as demonstrate the IAF of the tablet.

1) Scribble Test – Grade: Pass
Test pen 1 – 100px – pen pressure: size
Test pen 2 – 100px – pen pressure: size+opacity

For my pen tests, I always start out with a few pen pressure scribbles to see if I can do some nice squiggly lines with increasing pen pressure. I also do some back and forth shading and some spirals with increasing pen pressure.

With the Huion H1060P, I had no problems doing my little scribbles going from thin to thick. I didn’t have any problems controlling my strokes and making both thin and thick lines was relatively easy. This tablet gets an easy pass here.

2) Slow Ruler Line Test – Grade: Pass
Test pen 1 – 10px – pen pressure: none
Test pen 2 – 50px – pen pressure: size

The slow ruler line tests done with a no pen pressure pen were very good at all pen angles, even when holding the pen as far tilted as I could. You can certainly see a tiny bit of wobble when I tilted the pen as far over as I could, but it’s almost unnoticeable with how small the wobble is.

This tablet gets a very easy pass here.

3) Quick Hatching Test – Grade: Pass
Test pen 1 – 100px – pen pressure: size

The quick hatching test is to check whether the tablet keeps up with pen inputs. Usually, the only way to fail this section is if the pen is noticeably laggy and causes unwanted inputs like fishhooks at the beginning or end of the line.

As you can see, this tablet appears to have no problems with fishhooks. I also never noticed the cursor lagging noticeably, so it gets a pass here.

4) Short Release Taper Test – Grade: Pass
Test pen 1 – 100px – pen pressure: size

This test is meant to see the smoothness of the pen pressure taper when going from max to min pressure quickly. Basically, you press your pen down hard then flick to the side to see how smoothly the stroke tapers.

With the Huion H1060P, the tapers look very nice and appear to have no problems with jaggedness. This tablet gets an easy pass here.

5) Pen Pressure Control/Transition Test – Grade: Pass
Test pen 1 – 100px – pen pressure: size+opacity

This section is to test the smoothness of the transitions in pen pressure.
-The circles at the top are one of Youtuber Brad Colbow’s tests. It is used to check if you can properly control the pen pressure all the way around a circle. If there is a pressure jump, some circles will feel impossible to control due to that jump.
-The lines at the bottom are slow strokes done with smooth increases or decreases to pen pressure in mind. The arrow points in the direction which the stroke was done, and the smoothness of the gradients show how smooth the pen pressure transitions.

In terms of the pen pressure control circles, I had no problems doing all the different circles smoothly. They showed no signs of pen pressure jumping.

I will give this tablet a pass here since there don’t appear to be any noticeable issues in the pen pressure transitions either.

6) Initial Activation Force & Lightest Pen Pressure Test – Grade: Pass
Test pen 1 – 300px – pen pressure: size

This test tries to demonstrate the IAF of the tablet, and also shows the lowest possible pen pressure the tablet is capable of producing consistently.
IAF is the amount of force necessary to cause the pen to output a line. Ideally, your tablet will have an extremely low IAF where the pen will output a line with the least amount of force possible.
A high IAF causes issues such as light pen taps not registering as clicks, and the inability to sketch very lightly, both of which become quite annoying the more you experience it.

For this test page, the squiggly lines should begin right on the start line.
-If the line begins right on the start line, this indicates that the IAF is extremely low (low IAF is best) and the line just appears naturally without effort.
-On the other hand, if the line does not begin on the start line and instead begins further along the stroke, this means that the IAF is high so I needed to search for the IAF by increasing my force little by little until I finally started outputting a line.

An example of the ideal test page is the Huion New 1060 Plus (2048) IAF test page which I included above for comparison. Almost all the lines begin right on the start line meaning it has extremely low IAF, and the lines are almost transparent showing that the tablet is capable of drawing extremely light pen pressures.

The Huion H1060P has a fairly low IAF which I could find right away more often than not. As you can see, I was usually able to get the lines to start on the start line.
The IAF is low enough that I never noticed it when tapping options or sketching lightly.

In terms of the lightest pen pressure, I could get pretty thin lines with the 300px IAF test pen. The thin lines on this tablet are not quite as amazingly thin as the Huion New 1060 Plus (2048) IAF test page which is the ideal, but this thinness is extremely good and is more than acceptable.

Overall, the Huion H1060P has very good low IAF and is able to draw very thin lines consistently. This tablet gets a pass here.

7) Pen Tilt Test – Pass
Test pen 1 – 100px – pen tilt: opacity
Test pen 2 – 100px – flat pen – pen tilt: direction

This test shows the smoothness of the pen tilt by gradually tilting the pen while slowly moving the pen to the side. This section also includes scribbles using the pen direction determined by pen tilt.

As you can see in the smoothness test, the pen tilt transitions on the Huion H1060P are not perfectly smooth. You can certainly see the steps in the gradient, but that’s expected with only +-60 levels of pen tilt.
With that said, if you go look at my recent Wacom Intuos Pro 2017 review, you can see that the pen tilt on the Huion H1060P is surprisingly quite competitive and the pen tilt on the supposed “professional” tablet is actually not significantly better.
I think we can safely give this tablet a pass here.

Overall

So all in all, the drawing test results are:
1) Scribble Test – Pass
2) Slow Ruler Line Test – Pass
3) Quick Hatching Test – Pass
4) Short Release Taper Test – Pass
5) Pen Pressure Control/Transition Test – Pass
6) Initial Activation Force & Lightest Pen Pressure Test – Pass

Non-Vital Drawing Tests:
7) Pen Tilt Test – Pass

Ideally, all the above tests should have at least a “Pass-ish” for their grades because the most vital function of a drawing tablet is to draw properly and predictably. Failing any of these tests means that it doesn’t do that.

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The drawing experience!

My actual drawing experience with the Huion H1060P was just as fantastic as you would expect from the pen tests. I have absolutely no complaints about the pen pressure, and it feels very nice to have the control over my strokes that this fairly large tablet offers.

The stroke control for this tablet is very good and it tapers very well for both short and long strokes.
Of course, the pen pressure isn’t as customizable as XP-Pen’s, but it’s really nice nonetheless. In fact, the default pen pressure is so good that I really don’t care that there is no customizable pressure curve.

The surface of this tablet is fairly smooth, but it feels great to draw on. It’s also great that the pen has a nice rubber grip which makes it comfortable to use for long periods of time.
Due to the surface being fairly smooth, your nib will basically never wear out, and even if it does, you have 8 replacement nibs in the pen stand.

The expresskeys are also simply fantastic to use and I have no complaints about them at all. Out of all the tablets I have ever tested, only the Huion New 1060 Plus and Huion H1060P has allowed me to comfortably do all my work using just expresskeys (by using them alongside a free software called RadialMenu).

It may also be somewhat important to note that this tablet has pen tilt functionality, and pretty good pen tilt at that. This is an advantage that not many tablets in the sub 100 USD price range have.
I personally don’t find pen tilt very useful, but if I can have it for this price, then I’ll take it.

Tilt Firmware Update – For people with the non-tilt H1060P
The tilt induction function is a upgraded function of the device. If you order the H1060P from our official online shop, you will receive the upgraded model so that you can use this function directly. If you order it from other channels like Amazon, or if you have already owned one H1060P, you can send your serial number, order number and your OS version to service@huion.com and they will send you a firmware upgrade package. Follow their guidelines to install it and then you can also use the tilt induction function.

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Conclusion

Any beginner who is considering a 100 USD Wacom Intuos would be much better off spending their 100 USD on the Huion H1060P instead. If you need a drawing software, just use one of the reputable free programs such as Medibang Paint or Krita. There is no need to get paid programs until you get the hang of digital art and know you need the special niche features they offer.

Edit: Now that the Huion H1060P has pen tilt, I rate it much higher than the XP-Pen Deco 03 at the same price. I would even argue that it’s a good alternative to the Wacom Intuos Pro unless you need the pen rotation feature, which is separate from pen tilt+direction. However, for just 100 USD, this is without a doubt a much better choice than the low-end Wacom Intuos.
Even for experienced users, I can recommend this tablet wholeheartedly. Of course, if you need pen rotation, the Wacom Intuos Pro is your only choice, but the Huion H1060P is a fantastic tablet if you don’t need that feature.
I personally would recommend the Huion H1060P over the XP-Pen Deco 03 simply because the rounded edges are more comfortable for me, and because the expresskeys are much nicer to use than XP-Pen’s, but you should be the one deciding whether those nuances are important to you or not.

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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.

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

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