Review: Parblo Intangbo M pen tablet
Review unit provided by Parblo
Parblo’s a company that sells pen tablets and pen displays for creating digital art. The pen display lineup the company is popular for is the Parblo Coast series. For pen tablets, they currently have these series:
- Intangbo (higher end): From US $55
- Ninos (mid range): From US $26
- A series (older): From US $33
The Parblo Intangbo pen tablets are available in two sizes, 10 x 6.25 inches Medium (US $76.99) and 7 x 4 inches Small (US $59.99). The two colours available are black and lilac. There are models with protection film included for $4-5 more.
These are the items included in my box:
- 1x Intangbo M/S Pen Tablet
- 1x P08 Battery-Free Pen
- 1x USB-C 1.5m long Cable
- 8x Pen Nib
- 1x Pen Nib Clip
- 1x OTG to Micro Adapter
- 1x OTG to Type-c Adapter
- 1x Manual
- 1x Warranty Card
- 1x PR-01 Glove
- 1x Micro Fiber Cleaning Cloth
- Stickers
Design
Design of the Parblo Intangbo pen tablet looks good. Build quality is solid.
The lilac colour actually looks quite nice but it’s difficult for my camera to capture the colours accurately. If you prefer something more subtle, there’s always the classic black colour.
The back has 6 rubber feet with good grip on the table.
The 8 shortcut buttons and dial wheel are customisable. They have good feedback and work well.
The USB-C cable you see above is L-shaped, braided and is lilac in colour too.
The Parblo P08 pen supports tilt and 8192 levels of pressure sensitivity. There are two customisable side buttons but no eraser. The pen is not powered by battery so no charging is required.
The tactile experience on the textured drawing surface is really nice. Parblo also sells a version of the Intangbo pen tablets with protective film on top to prevent scratches at no extra cost. I’m personally not too fussy about scratches on pen tablets because with usage scratches will develop eventually.
There’s a curved in part on the tablet where you can place the pen horizontally so you don’t actually need to use the pen stand.
The pen stand has 8 replacement nibs and the nib remover inside.
The medium size has a drawing surface area of 10 x 6.25 inch. The physical size of the tablet is quite similar to my 16-inch laptop, but much thinner of course. The L-shape cable makes it possible to place the tablet very close to my laptop.
Driver
The tablet supports Windows, MacOS and Android but drivers are only for Windows and MacOS.
The drivers I’ve tested for this review are Windows driver v3.5.1.3 and MacOS driver v3.5.10 (1). Functionality of the Windows and MacOS driver should be quite similar except there’s Windows Ink with the Windows driver which you may have to toggle on or off for troubleshooting if pressure is not working as expected.
This is what the driver shows with the tablet connected. Pen side button customisation options are available.
For the Windows driver, right click can only be assigned to the pen button further from the pen tip. There’s no right click option for the button closer to the pen tip.
Here’s where you can match the aspect ratio of the drawing surface to your display. If your hand draws a circle and an oval appears on screen, you need to match the aspect ratio.
Here’s where you can customise the tablet shortcut buttons. You can customise up to 6 shortcuts for the dial, and switch between the functionality by pressing the middle button.
These are the possible settings for the pen side buttons and shortcut buttons.
You can create different groups of shortcuts for different apps. When the app you use is active, the shortcuts you have created for that app will load automatically. This is quite useful.
The driver does not have Switch Display functionality. Using this tablet with a dual display setup can be quite inconvenient when you want to switch the cursor from one display to the other.
Drawing performance
These are line tests created with Medibang Paint Pro on Windows.
1. Slow diagonal lines suffer from slight waviness.
2. Lines are able to taper well but not as sharply compared to Photoshop.
3. Line transition from thin to thick is smooth. You can see the wavy line effect with the thin diagonal lines.
4. It’s easy to maintain consistent pressure to draw lines with consistent width.
5. Dots cannot be drawn by just tapping the pen. You have to tap and drag the pen tip slightly to get the dots.
Drawing performance seems fine despite the issue with wavy diagonal lines.
This is Krita (Windows) and there are issues with tilt sensitivity. The start of the stroke (A) has the tendency to be random, and it’s not easy to maintain tilt angle (B) the whole way.
There are issues with tilt sensitivity with Photoshop (Windows) too. I’ve used rake brushes for these test. The first broad stroke works. But I wasn’t able to create thin strokes when I held my pen vertical in the direction as shown in the picture above.
Clip Studio Paint (Windows) works fine for drawing.
Affinity Photo (Windows) works fine for drawing.
These are line tests created with Photoshop (Mac).
1. There’s still the slow diagonal line wobble.
2. Strokes taper very nicely.
3. Line transition from thin to thick is smooth.
4. It’s easy to maintain consistent pressure to draw lines with consistent width.
5. Dots can be drawn by just tapping the pen tip.
6. No issues with cross hatching.
This was drawn with Photoshop (Mac). The diagonal line wobble effect only appears if you’re drawing extremely slow so it doesn’t really affect me with my normal drawing speed.
Line tests may not look good but the overall drawing performance with the pen is still good because tests are just tests and what matters most is real world performance. Initial activation of the pen is very low, and you can tweak the pressure curve with the driver to get the sensitivity you want.
Conclusion
The Parblo Intangbo M is a beautiful tablet that has good drawing performance only affected by wobble when you’re drawing diagonal lines really slowly. I didn’t really experience anything amiss while drawing and was able to get the lines to come out the way I expect them to. Drawing performance will also depend on the apps you use.
Main downsides would be the lack of Display Switch functionality so this tablet is not convenient for use with dual display setups. Another downside you can’t set right-click to the pen side button that’s closest to the pen tip.
I did not test the tablet with Android OS though but since there’s no Android driver, you won’t be able to tweak the pen settings or the customise the shortcut buttons.
Pros and cons at a glance:
+ Beautiful
+ Solid build quality
+ Good drawing performance (with downside)
+ 8 replacement nibs included
+ 1.5m long braided L-shaped cable included.
+ Works with Android
+ Textured drawing surface provides nice tactile experience
+ 8 shortcut buttons and dial
– Slight wobble with diagonal lines
– Tilt sensitivity does not work consistently
– No Display Switch functionality is inconvenient for dual display setups
– Cannot set right-click to pen side button closest to pen tip
Availability
You can find the Parblo Ninos pen tablets at these locations:
