monoprice lcd touch screen monitor driver made in china

It’s been almost two months since I first received my 19-inch Monoprice Interactive Pen Display and reported how very disappointed I was in the $389 tablet monitor.

I’ve been meaning to post this follow up review ever since, but I’ve kept checking the Monoprice and Huion sites weekly hoping for signs of a new set of Windows drivers that could vastly improve this device. Unfortunately, the only driver download available from Monoprice dates back to October and the product manager with whom I’ve corresponded hasn’t been able to confirm whether any updates are even in the pipeline.

The Monoprice’s drivers appear to be rebadged Huion drivers for its GT-190 tablet display. I am not 100% certain that the drivers are identical, but except for logos, the drivers’ control panels are exactly the same. The Huion archive was updated in December, so I am currently running that driver version. However, except for the English language product manual, the other files in the .zip are dated 2012 and earlier.

Neither the Monoprice nor Huion archives contain Windows 8.x-specific drivers, so it doesn’t appear that any software development is occurring on the Windows side. And boy, does the Monoprice Interactive Pen Display need it!

As I wrote in my unboxing, this tablet monitor makes a very good first impression given its low price. Packaging is professional, industrial design is very nice, build quality is excellent and the rubberized stylus has a nice size and feel.

Cable connections are in the lower back of the monitor and face downward. You’ll have to hold the display upside down to attach either the included VGA or optional DVI cable as well as the USB cable for pen input. You’ll also need to be careful about how the cables are threaded out of the back as they tend to interfere with the monitor’s stand.

Monoprice could save Windows users hours of frustration by publishing a bright red warning label with the following instructions contained on page 4 of the manual: “Important! Do not plug the monitor into your PC until after you have installed the driver software.”

They should also highlight this critical bit of information from page 6: (Following driver installation) “Unplug all other monitor connections from your PC.”

And last, but not least, from page 8: (After setting the display resolution), plug in the included USB cable. “Windows will then finalize the installation of the monitor and its driver.”

So to summarize: the pen display won’t work in multi-monitor mode in Windows. Install the drivers first. Unplug your current monitor and plug in the Monoprice. Start up your system and set the resolution. 1440 x 900 is maximum, but don’t be surprised if your video card doesn’t support those dimensions (a couple of the machines I tested didn’t but the display worked ok in a lower res). Lastly, connect the USB cable from the display to your pc. The pen drivers should install automatically. I don’t recall if it’s required, but to be safe you’ll want to reboot your pc after the pen driver installation.

By default, the pen drivers will display an icon in your system tray. Left clicking on the icon will load up the control panel. You can also access the control panel directly under Control Panel\Tablet Setting.

Don’t be surprised if your system doesn’t seem to respond to your pen’s taps. Using the Monoprice drivers, default clicking sensitivity was set too low. No matter how hard I pounded with the pen, I couldn’t get clicks to register. (You’ll want to keep a mouse handy in case this happens to you). Changing the click pressure setting in the control panel corrected this issue. With the Huion driver I’m currently using I didn’t experience the problem, though I still had to set click sensitivity all the way to Heavy in order to get maximum range of pressure.

6. If you want to install to a directory other than the default, click the Change button and locate the desired installation directory. Otherwise, click the Next button to continue. 7. Click the Install button to begin the driver installation. 8.

6. If the monitor is installed and operating properly, the details section of the Tablet PC Settings dialog will indicate "Pen and Touch Input Available", as shown in the following image. If the Reset... button is NOT grayed out, click it to clear any previous calibration data.

9. Click the Setup button in the Tablet PC Settings dialog again. 10. This time, click the Touch input selection. 11. Once again, both screens turn white and the following text appears. If the text is NOT on the drawing display, press the ENTER key to move the text to the other screen.

13. Click the Pen input selection. 14. The drawing display"s screen will turn white and the following text will be displayed. Note the parallel blue lines at the top, bottom, and on each side of the screen. The intersections of these lines are the calibration points. A black crosshair appears on the upper leftmost intersection.

17. This time, click the Touch input selection. 18. Once again, the screen will turn white and the following text will be displayed. Using your finger, carefully tap the center of the crosshairs for each of the 16 calibration points. 19.

This is a review of the Ugee 2150, which is a “tablet monitor,” also called a pen display tablet, a screen tablet, or simply a Wacom Cintiq alternative. I’ll try to make this review as clear as possible for those who are completely new to the world of graphics tablets, those who are familiar with Wacom’s products, and even those who are familiar with other Cintiq alternatives.

Excellent buy. It works as well as a Cintiq, but has no buttons, glass screen, some parallax. Full HD screen, great viewing angles, nice size. Rechargeable pen, no eraser, but no lag. Fair price. Looks exactly like the Huion GT-220, but with a different adjustment stand, and better drivers in my opinion. Nobody’s heard of Ugee but you shouldn’t have to worry especially if you buy from Amazon. It’s actually great.

If the terms graphics tablet, Wacom, Intuos and Cintiq are already familiar to you, then skip to the next section. If you’re new at this: a graphics tablet is NOT like an iPad, Android tablet, or a Surface Pro. They don’t have built-in operative systems that you can interact with independently. Instead, the most basic graphics tablets (like Wacom’s Intuos and Intuos Pro) are plastic surfaces that you plug into your computer and maps the location of your stylus to the location of the mouse cursor on your desktop. So, it can replace your computer mouse, and lets you make digital art with increased precision. A tablet monitor is an LCD monitor with graphics tablet technology built inside, so you can draw directly on this monitor with the included stylus!

Remember, graphics tablets and tablet monitors are accessories to desktops/laptops, and cannot work on their own! If you want to draw on an independently-operating tablet, consider investing in a Microsoft Surface Pro 3, or a Cintiq Companion (different from a regular Cintiq!).

To rival the best, the Ugee 2150 has 2048 levels of pressure sensitivity, a 1920x1080 display resolution over a 21.5 inch screen with really nice viewing angles, a really responsive pen with no noticeable lag, and has a VGA, DVI-I, and HDMI port. That’s all you really need to know. Their website can tell you that it has 5080 LPI (lines per inch) and a 233 RPS (report rate), and some other technical stuff, but frankly, I couldn’t tell the difference between the 5080 LPI in this product and the 4000 LPI on Yiynova’s equivalent. They both felt great. Don’t get caught up in the numbers (who’s verifying them anyway?) -- all you need to know is that it works, and it’s snappy.

As I’ve mentioned in the previous section, the display resolution is an IPS LCD with native Full HD (1920x1080) resolution, and 2048 levels of pressure. So, it seems like the Ugee does everything the Cintiq does. And I’d have to agree, for the most part. I don’t feel like there’s anything I can’t do on the Ugee that I could do on a Cintiq. Older Cintiq alternatives have poor viewing angles (color becomes distorted or washed out when viewed from the sides, top, or bottom), and they were usually smaller. But this device fixes those issues.

There are some sacrifices though. The biggest one being the glossy, glass screen. The good news is that it is very difficult to scratch. The bad news is that it’s very smooth, and doesn’t feel as natural as drawing on paper, or on a matte surface like on a Cintiq. Also, it’s extremely reflective. So be careful about ceiling lights and windows. You might have to play around with the placement and angle of your device in order to see clearly. Personally, I don’t mind the glass, and I have no issues finding an angle good enough to evade windows and lights. I had a POSRUS-brand matte screen protector (designed for the Wacom 22HD) on my Yiynova MVP22U, and it will work perfectly on this device. It reduces glare and provides a nice tooth to the drawing surface. The reason I didn’t get another for the Ugee is because installing a screen protector is a nightmare for a screen this big: air bubbles and dust particles are almost impossible to eradicate completely.

The second main difference is the lack of Express Keys. That’s Wacom’s lingo for assignable buttons designed to speed up your workflow, so you don’t have to reach across your desk to use keyboard shortcuts. In the case of the Ugee, you’d have to do exactly that. If you want Express Keys, consider the Yiynova MVP22U v3, though its buttons are awkwardly located on the top of the device. I think several Bosto tablet monitors have buttons too. Some buttons can be finicky, though. If you really, really really on buttons or rocker wheels, then I’d suggest saving for a Cintiq.

I’m not sure how nobody has noticed this, but the Ugee 2150 looks literally identical to a black Huion GT-220 (Huion also offers a silver colored one, whereas the Ugee 2150 only ships in one color). Not only that, but Ugee’s 19 inch tablet monitor, the 1910B, looks literally identical to the Huion GT-190 (To complicate matters, some outdated photos of the 1910B show the menu buttons in the bottom-center of the unit, as opposed to the Huion’s bottom-right buttons. However, if you purchase a 1910B, the buttons will appear in the bottom-right). So you might conclude that perhaps the Ugee is a rebranded Huion, or vice versa, but you’d be wrong. These companies aren’t affiliated with each other. That’s apparent because their non-monitor graphics tablets aren’t alike, and are clearly competing with each other.

The only visible difference between these companies’ tablet monitors is the logo branding, the included stylus, and the detachable adjustment stand, which I will talk about later.

What do these similarities imply? I’m not sure. My suspicion is that both Huion and Ugee contract the same factory to manufacture their monitor parts. It shouldn’t be so surprising that these Hong Kong-based, Shenzhen-manufactured companies to share factories to cut costs. In fact, you’ll find many of these companies use the exact same adjustment stand for their tablet monitors (but not Ugee).

But there IS an important difference: even though the Ugee 2150 looks identical to the black Huion GT-220, it shares the same UC-Logic digitizer as Yiynova’s tablet monitors. In other words, the technology that registers the stylus location and pressure, which is built in behind the LCD panel, is different. Huion develops their digitizer technology internally, though if I had to guess, I’d say it’s somehow derived from UC-Logic. They then sell these products to Monoprice and Turcom (so when you buy a Monoprice or Turcom tablet monitor, you literally are buying a rebranded Huion product). However, the Ugee is not a rebranded Huion. Both Ugee and Yiynova are partners of a separate company, UC-Logic, which develops their own digitizer technology.

Addendum: There may have been a time in which UC-Logic sold their digitizers to Huion and Monoprice. Some prominent artists on Tumblr have claimed that Huion and Monoprice products are built with the UC-Logic technology as Yiynova devices (known to work better than the Waltrop digitizers that older Yiynova devices had). Because of this, there are claims that the styluses for these products are compatible with each other. This may have been true once, I’m not sure, but those times are long gone. I would not recommend buying a stylus from one company, and hoping it will work for another kind of tablet monitor. Even between Yiynova and Huion, since technology varies slightly.

Having used both the Yiynova MVP22U v3 and the Ugee 2150, it seems clear that Ugee and Yiynova share the same kind of digitizer, and as a result, similar driver software. The drivers and styluses are not inter-compatible, though, but the install files, interface, system tray icon, etc. are identical if not unmistakably similar.

The Windows 8/8.1 drivers allow you to toggle Digital Ink, switch monitor mapping, customize the two pen buttons, test and tweak the pressure, and calibrate your stylus mapping. I keep Digital Ink off, but you may need to toggle it if you’re having issues with pressure sensitivity in some art programs. Make sure you switch the monitor setting if you decide to use your device as an extended monitor.

I prefer the UC-Logic drivers to Huion’s, because it seems to work better with Windows 8.1, at least at the time of writing. For example, the Ugee and Yiynova drivers registers the stylus even during the Windows 8 login screen, whereas Huion’s drivers would not load the drivers until after I logged in. Ugee/Yiynova drivers also allow you to rotate your calibration, so you can use the device upside down for whatever reason (some people do this so the cables come off the top instead of the bottom).

In Huion’s defense, their drivers allow more pen button customizability. Huion’s drivers allow you to assign keyboard keys to your pen buttons, as well as some other goodies that I haven’t tested yet. It depends on your workflow. I always assign right click and middle click to my pen buttons, so I don’t consider this a loss.

I’ve had better experience with software compatibility with Ugee/Yiynova drivers, though this may be addressed in the future. With the Huion, I experienced sporadic issues with Mischief, and it would not work with Paint Tool Sai 1.1. The Ugee and Yiynova work perfectly with SAI and Mischief, aside from very rare, brief hiccups that fix themselves in a matter of seconds. The Huion, Ugee, and Yiynova all work with Photoshop, Illustrator, Autodesk Sketchbook, and even obscure software such as Pixologic’s Sculptris.

There is a bit of distance between the glass surface and the actual LCD behind it. This is common to all Cintiq alternatives, though older 19 inch tablet monitors seem to have greater distance. If I had to guess, it’d be about half a centimeter distance. It’s not bad, but the parallax may be distracting for some users.

If you decide to purchase this product, you may find the monitor too bright, especially at night. Dimming the backlight of the display is more difficult than it seems: I found that lowering the brightness setting on the Ugee 2150’s on-screen display only seems to darken the colors, crushing the gray scale, instead of actually just dimming the backlight. It’s set to 50 by default, so lowering it adds black to all colors, and raising it washes out all the colors. I have to keep it at 50 if I don’t want the colors to look like crap, but it made it very difficult to stare into for long periods of time.

But, then I discovered a solution! If the monitor is too bright for you, what you want to do is change the color temperature preset to “User,” and then individually modify the Red, Green, Blue values to a lower number. They’re set to 100 by default, so I lowered each of them down to 45. Now I have no problems using this device up close for normal amounts of time.

Like all tablet monitors, it comes with a detachable adjustment stand that allows you to alter the angle of the display for a better drawing experience. Yiynova, Huion, and Bosto devices come with the same exact adjustment stand, but Ugee’s is different. It’s very similar, though, but the main difference is that it slightly elevates the Ugee 2150. This works especially well because, for some inexplicable reason, the menu buttons are located on the underside of the device. So, Ugee’s stand allows me to access the menu buttons even when the monitor is upright. By contrast, the stand that comes with the Huion does not elevate the monitor, so the downward facing menu buttons are inaccessible when the monitor is upright. And that’s just ridiculous.

However, it feels a little bit flimsier than the one that ships with other Cintiq alternatives, but not enough that it impedes its function. I quickly forgot about this minor quip after noticing the difference in build. It comes with rubberized feet so it does not slide across the desk when you lean against the monitor while drawing, and it holds the angle of the monitor well.

However, the angles of the stand are limited by cables that come out of the bottom of the unit. Because of the poor placement of the ports, lower angles cause the monitor to rest on the wires. Although the stand is capable of lower angles, the wires prevent them.

However, I would not recommend messing with the pressure settings in the drivers. The “click sensitivity” is set to the lightest setting by default, and I would leave it there. You’re welcome to experiment, but I found that this didn’t alter the pressure range the way I wanted it to. The heavier I set the setting, the more it ignores my light strokes. I lose the full range of pressure and my light strokes become choppy. This doesn’t bother me, though, because the default settings feel comfortable to me.

There’s also a small quirk with UC-Logic digitizers, as I have noticed on the Yiynova as well. The cursor seems to wander a little bit at the very edges of the screen. This is a minor problem because I rarely find myself drawing in those corners. To give you a better idea of this issue, I never have any problem clicking the start menu.

Printers are also getting cheap. At CES last January, Monoprice, the same company you buy Ethernet and HDMI cables from, introduced a line of 3D printers that would be released this year. While the $300 resin-based printer has been canned, Monoprice has released their MP Select Mini 3D printer for $200. This printer appeared on Monoprice late last month.

Monoprice’s MP Select Mini doesn’t require special filament, and it can use the standard Open Source 3D printing software. This is in stark contrast to the XYZPrinting da Vinci from 2014. The da Vinci uses chipped, DRMed filament, and a proprietary interface instead of standard G-code. The MP Select Mini doesn’t pull any of these tricks, and is a minor miracle for a $200 printer.

Like most of the name brand printers found at CES last January, this printer is a rebadge of something already being made somewhere in China. The most likely suspect for a manufacture is a company called Infitary. You can buy a printer nearly identical to the Monoprice MP Mini on AliExpress right now, and it doesn’t seem Monoprice added anything special to this printer.

Judging by the spec sheet, I’d guess Monoprice doesn’t even know what they have on their hands here. The real specs for this printer are actually better than what Monoprice has published. This printer is capable of a layer height much smaller than 100 microns.

Before showing off the prints the Monoprice MP Select Mini can produce, I must mention a simple fact: sample prints are not indicative of the quality of a printer. A 3D printer is just a CNC machine, and most of the work in turning an STL file into a real object is done by the slicer.

There is one glaring issue with the Monoprice MP Select Mini: the temperature control loop for the hotend is terrible. My printer has +/- 5 degree temperature swings over a period of several minutes, and this has been seen in other reviews of this model. The reason for this is an uncalibrated PID loop. Nearly every printer firmware has a PID autotune function that clears this problem right up. The firmware for this printer does not have a PID autotune function as far as I can tell.

The Z axis is leadscrew driven with an M4 threaded rod. It’s weird, and the Z axis is tremendously slow. This, however, is a selling point Monoprice failed to mention. Because the Z axis lead screw’s thread pitch is so fine, this printer can produce objects with a very, very small layer height. [Prusa]’s calculator gives a very low theoretical minimum layer height for this setup. The minimum layer height is not 100 micron as the spec sheet says, but it can be taken as evidence Monoprice is underselling the capabilities of this printer. It does mean Z axis travel is very slow, but that really doesn’t matter.

This printer is an exercise in how inexpensively you can produce a printer, and these efforts clearly show in the electronics board. There are only six chips on this board: four HH4988 motor drivers (I assume off-brand clones of the popular A4988 stepper motor drivers), a buck converter (most likely for the LCD), and the microcontroller, an STM32F103 microcontroller. Yes, 32-bit printing is finally here.

As far as the LCD and controls go, they’re exactly what you would expect. It’s a full color TFT, most likely the same model used in an old non-smartphone, with a single rotary button. I believe the LCD and button assembly connect to the printer board over SPI. The controls allow the user to load a file from the SD card, move the axes around, and set the temperature. It’s the bare minimum, but you don’t really need much more.

The Monoprice MP Select Mini is, by any account, a My First 3D Printer™, so let’s compare apples to apples. The class of printers that can be called a My First 3D Printer™ aren’t the Lulzbots, Ultimakers, or other machines that cost $1500 and up. ‘Beginner’ 3D printers are better defined by the SeeMeCNC Eris, the Printrbot Play and Metal Simple, the Deezmaker Bukito, the Maker’s Toolworks MiniMax, the da Vinci printer, and [Prusa]’s i3 Mk2.

The Monoprice MP Select Mini stands out in its price range. This machine is only $200, and you’re getting features you won’t find in a $600 Printrbot. This is a game-changing machine, and I would recommend this to anyone looking for their first 3D printer. Thanks to Monoprice, the entire market for entry-level consumer 3D printers has been upended. $200 is almost impulse purchase territory, and Monoprice is going to sell a lot of these machines.

USE THESE INFORMATION AT YOUR OWN RISK. I am not responsible for any damage done to your printer or LCD when using these information. I hope you find them useful, I try to make them as accurate as possible but they may contain mistakes.

Note: I guess that BL-SIG and VCC are there to be able to support a BLTouch sensor. There is apparently a special Interface board with a connector for BLTouch.

It is possible to upgrade the Wanhao Duplicator i3 Plus printers (non Mark II) with a BLTouch using an alternative firmware: ADVi3++ (I am the creator of this firmware).

The LCD Touch Screen is build around an ARM kernel and simplifies the development of user interfaces: the different screens are defined by a set of files (images, fonts, etc) stored in the flash memory of the panel and they can be customized using a graphical editor (part of DGUS SDK).

A set of resources, made by the manufacturer of the 3D printer (Wanhao, Monoprice, Coccon) or yourself. This component is often called "LCD firmware" even if it is wrong.

The last point is very important. The LCD (i.e. DGUS) is not able to handle other formats like top-down bitmaps. To convert images to the right format, you can use ImageMagick convert:

IMPORTANT: You have to use a microSD card with a maximum capacity of 8GiB. If you use a microSD card with a greater capacity, the results are unreliable (sometimes it flashes, sometimes not). This is a limitation of the LCD display itself.

Most of the changes (such as for the second serial line or the Mini LCD) have nothing to do with the Wanhao i3 Plus, but deal with MakerLab Maker printer.

i3extra from Nemcsik Péter: a modified version of the Marlin 1.1.0-RC8 firmware and updated LCD resources. Important: this project is no more maintained.

I also discovered the default direction and steps of the rotary encoder were kind of wonky. You can still get around but it doesn"t exactly behave as you"d expect with respect to direction. For the LCD that I bought I needed to change the direction of the encoder and the menu to get things to move in a logical direction. I also added individual axis homing.uncomment #define REVERSE_ENCODER_DIRECTION

Lastly I printed the parts for this LCD Cover http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2133588 and moved the LCD into the machine. The pints on the bottom of the new controller didn"t fit the pins of the Monoprice controller so I found some bushings to attach to the bottom of the Arduino Mega to keep the pins off the metal plate and found a enough space to put everything in and re-attach the bottom plate.

This model is among the most economical of the Cintiq alternatives for its size. It’s a tablet monitor that attaches to your computer. It works with Windows and Mac. You can also use it as a regular monitor and attach it to a TV or projector.

The tablet monitor came safely packaged in cardboard, with a hard backing, and styrofoam. The inner cardboard box having a handy handle. The packaging is not fancy—it’s no-frills, and the savings are passed along to us.

The boxes open vertically rather than like a clamshell. Inside, along with all the cords, are some nice extras: a drawing glove, screen protector, and extra pen and cord. The screen protector is in a separate package.

The drivers support Windows 10, even though the info in the paper booklet doesn’t go up that high. The driver comes on an included CD, but I used the ones from the Ugee site. You can use anything from XP to Windows 10. It also works on the latest Mac OSX (and I am checking with the company about older Macs).

You have to delete all tablet drivers and any remnants of them before installing. You connect all the cables, including the USB, with the computer and tablet turned off, then install the driver, then reboot.

If your screen is high-resolution, you will need to set the monitor to Extend mode. If your resolution is the same as or lower than the Ugee’s, then set it to Duplicate. If you are getting a big offset, this setting is the first thing you need to look at.

Since I did have remnant files from other drivers, I at first got the dreaded “other tablet drivers detected” error. What solved it for me was going into the Windows folder and deleting two files, a fix I quickly found online after doing a search for the text of the error message. If you have never installed another tablet, then you should not have a problem installing.

The glossy screen is flat glass all the way up to the ends. There is no raised bezel, only a black frame that’s a bit less than an inch wide, making good use of the screen real estate. You could use a ruler or template on it if you want—makes it easy to make stencils.

The glossiness of the screen makes colors look brighter. Thanks to the flat glass, if you want to use a different screen protector, such as a matte one to get some paperlike tooth, you don’t need to worry about cutting it to fit within the bezel.

The protector covers the active area and a bit beyond. I installed it and got some bubbles that I’m working on getting rid of. The pen doesn’t scratch the tablet if you do not put on the protector, so you may prefer to go bare-screened. If you wear the glove it will stop smudging and moisture. The protector does not affect drawing or the visibility.

There is a slight, very rare squeak with some pen strokes with the screen protector off, but the squeak is a lot less than on some tablet monitors, and it tends to go away after a while—it’s that new-tablet sound.

The display resolution is not high, so things are bit pixelated. Because of the large size, the pixelation is noticeable, and text is a little fuzzy. It’s not lower-res than the Cintiq 12ux or the original iPad, but at this large size, it is more noticeable. This is really my only sticking point. However, higher resolution would mean a higher price and I don’t see it as a dealbreaker. You can still see your art on whatever computer or second monitor you are using.

The viewing angles seem best straight on; this is not an IPS screen. But you don’t get blind spots or anything from other angles, you can see what’s on the screen. If you move around a lot the image becomes a little less clear from certain angles, but chances are you will be drawing from right in front of it. The stand does not swivel, it only goes up and down, the but if you want to turn the monitor it’s not terribly heavy.

There is a slight parallax (space between pen and screen), but not enough to bother me at all—maybe 1/10th of an inch. In fact I like it seeing the whole line instead of any of it being blocked by the pen.

You will need to use a USB port to charge the pen for about 45 minutes, and a USB cord to connect the monitor. A blue LED light stays on until the pen is fully charged. If you don’t have an extra port, you can charge the pen via a power bank or another device—or simply charge the pen then remove it.

With absolute mode, the cursor goes where you touch the pen to the screen. I left it on absolute, as it’s desirable for a tablet, unless you have a reason to use mouse mode. The driver also lets you set pen sensitivity and after some testing I put that around the middle, slightly to the harder side.

One happy surprise about UC-Logic drivers is their excellent responsiveness, which I find comparable or better than other digitizers, including Wacom’s. The Ugee’s driver has a comfortable pressure curve and seem to maximize line variation. You can get very thin, interesting lines, similar to using a ballpoint pen.

The driver includes a small test area where you can make adjustments. You can get a very thin line, like drawing with a fine ballpoint pen. Inking feels very fluid.

The screen is glossy, so colors appear bright and contrast is enhanced. The screen is smooth glass, with no tooth. The included screen protector is also glossy. The protector does not affect drawing.

Buttons are all along the bottom of the monitor, there are none on the sides. The “menu” button lets you make changes to positioning, color temperature, contrast, and other parameters. There is not a lot of customization to the drivers. If you want express keys, you could try a gaming tablet, Photoshop Actions, the Tablet Pro app, or a radial menu.

There are a lot of things that pricey Cintiqs has that this doesn’t, including multitouch–so you can’t use your hands on it, nor finger paint or gestures. The drivers have a lot less customization, and there are also no programmable express keys either on the monitor or on-screen.

I’ve looked at Ugee 1910B reviews in different places, and this seems overall to be a pretty well-liked tablet, with praise for the pressure curve. On the negative side, some people have technical issues with the drivers and aren’t happy with the help they’ve received. Occasionally there are issues with the pens ceasing to work, which could be from the battery.

The company seems to issue replacements of the tablet, pens, or parts when needed. In my own contact with Ugee, they responded quickly and helpfully—though my contact was with the general rep, not tech support. They do not seem to have elaborate customer support with screen sharing, but most places don’t. They have a Facebook page where you could upload images or videos if you’re having problems, and they can also be reached via email or Skype (or WeChat if you use that).

The Ugee is a fine choice for artists on a budget, for students, or beginners wanting to try a tablet monitor without a big investment. While you may want to eventually invest in a Cintiq, this is a fun and solid drawing tablet with a screen.

b. If connected by VGA cable, please make sure the audio cable is connected to the AUDIO/LINE/HEADPHONE OUT port and plugged into the AUDIO/LINE IN of the monitor.