Veikk S640 - Best Budget Drawing Tablet (osu!)

[jiyeon]

 

In the world of computer peripherals that allow us to utilise our skills and optimise our workflow to the best of our abilities, such as keyboards, mice, and more esoteric pieces of equipment such as external keypads and trackpads. One quality-of-life peripheral that has come to light in recent modern times, the drawing tablet. A hard, capacitive sheet that accepts input, and can even substitute as a mouse.

 

Today's subject is the Veikk S640, which I bought last year for £25.99, at the time, and to an extent, today, one of if not the cheapest drawing tablets available on the market. This tablet was marketed as an osu! tablet, and I spoiler alert, it is a damn good one.

 

The tablet itself is fairly standard-looking, it is 6" by 4" in dimensions for the working surface area. The tablet also uses a non-detachable USB-A cable. It looks very basic, but that's what you get when you buy a tablet that is under £40.

 

 

The pen is also fairly minimal, it has an understated design that I would bet would not look out of place in any work environment, apart from the two additional buttons near the tip. The tips are removable, but after a week of usage, I have not needed to swap out the tips. From tip to butt, the pen is 6" long. It also has the weight of a regular pen too, it's a well-built pen overall.

 

 

 

For the drivers, I personally think the Veikk drivers are trash and thus refuse to use them. I instead use Hawku drivers, which are drivers that are optimized for low-latency input, designed for osu! gameplay. Inside these drviers, there are options such as setting the tablet area, buttons, and also enabling different polling rates.

I personally have set my tablet area to be restricted to 1920x1080 on my 2560x1080 monitor, using the whole tablet area, and 1000Hz polling rate. My osu! sensitivity however is much higher and I never really find myself using the entirety of the tablet area anyway.

 

 

 

First is a beatmap of Dragonforce's 'Ashes of The Dawn', one of the most crowded beatmaps I have played so far in my time picking up osu! You can see how accurate I am at utilising the pen's sensitivity to transfer between circles. I find the weight of the pen integral to the fast pace of the motions.

 

 

Second piece is the chorus for a beatmap of LOONA's 'Hi High', which is one of my favorite beatmaps that I have played over fifty times. I find the tablet extra responsive to where I need the cursor to go.

 

 

This last piece of gameplay, one of Dreamcatcher's 'Chase Me' is easily one of the fastest beatmaps I have played so far, it is super quick and requires a lot of jumping. You can see in the latter half of the clip below that I have to make some long jumps across, this is where those Hawku drivers come in clutch to help me aim where I need to.

 

 

 

This tablet is great, there's honestly nothing really bad about it, if anything. It's amazing value, the tablet and the pen are fairly robust in build quality, and the input for gameplay and drawing is immaculate. For the price, it's hard to reject it as a budget tablet.

 

There's honestly not too much to point out in terms of bad things for this tablet. If I had to point a finger at one gripe, it would probably be the non-removable cable. Because of this cable, if it dies, the whole tablet goes down with it. It would have been amazing especially at this price to include a removable cable. But I do understand for this price why it was an omission, and honestly the price is enough of a pass for the cable.

 

I highly recommend this tablet for any digital artists, osu! players, or anybody who needs/wants a more eccentric mouse input option. The price is right, the build is basic but decent, and the pen has a nice minimal design. 

[Kanna]

Sounds like a buy for me but have you tested it in any drawing programs does it do the job?

[sub68]

I have been think on buying this for osu but still haven't decided

EDIT do you think I should revive the osu thread

[Kanna]

2 minutes ago, sub68 said:

I have been think on buying this for osu but still haven't decided

EDIT do you think I should revive the osu thread

I almost forgot that your choice

[TVwazhere]

-Thread cleaned-

 

Please keep the conversation on topic. 

[jiyeon]

On 6/3/2020 at 4:54 PM, Kanna said:

Sounds like a buy for me but have you tested it in any drawing programs does it do the job?

Can't say for definite as I only ever used it with Paint.NET - which doesn't support pen pressure - but on paper, the Veikk S640 with its 8192 levels of pen pressure and low latency, it might suffice. The tablet surface area itself can be a bit smal if you find 6x4" (approximately the size of a human hand) to be insufficient working area.

The pen also has no hardware-smoothing so you might need a steady hand, your mileage may vary.

[gloop]

On 6/3/2020 at 4:51 PM, sowon said:

it is supe quick and requires a lot of jumping.

Just found a small typo in the paragraph about Chase Me. 

[jiyeon]

5 hours ago, gloop said:

Just found a small typo in the paragraph about Chase Me. 

Thanks man!

[caobin]

Hi, thanks for all the in depth introduce you have provided here, very informative.
 I am eagerly awaiting arrival of new Veikk S640 for playing OSU game.