 Welcome back to the product review and today I'm going to look at SenseLab's Pen Tablet Medium Bundle. Now, full disclosure, SenseLab sent me this bundle here so I didn't pay for this, so thank you for the review unit. As always, it will be unboxing and then fast forward to the future where I've tried it for a couple of weeks, and that'll give you my two cents on what I thought. Before I do, hi, my name is JD and I do product reviews like these. I also do rig reviews, I do animation analysis clips, I do animation lectures, I do acting analysis clips, I do a bunch of stuff on my channel, there's always the pitch at the beginning, so like and subscribe, that's the thing that people say, but if you do like it, subscribe and hit the bell button so you don't miss any of my uploads, that is it for the pitch, let's keep it short. Now, if you watch my channel, you know I like tablets, I've done a couple of stuff about tablets, also talked about how I don't really use mice anymore, even though I just did a review of a really good ergonomic mouse, which I would recommend. But I'm more into a tablet just in terms of the ergonomic factor and how it helps me in terms of just the way I work and my wrist and my fingers, it's my preferred method to animate and just to work in general. That being said, I've used Wacom tablets for I don't know how long, I'm over 40 years, so I've used them for 30 years, like since the very beginning, they had their tablets and their quality has always last. They're more on the pricier side, but for me, I never really had any problems in terms of the hardware breaking down or anything, so I mean you pay for it, but you get really good quality. So I was very curious about this one, just because it comes with kind of an express key type of remote, which also has a screen, has me intrigued, because I'm getting older, so sometimes when I map my things to certain buttons that don't have any displays, I forget, I forget, I know you should not forget, because that's you've mapped it and you're using it all the time, but sometimes I do. So that's why I'm more leaning towards like Stream Deck or now Loop Deck, which is really cool because you got the customizable screen. So when I saw this, I thought that's really cool. So let me just unbox it first. It's the box that you get, not super heavy and tablet. Here is the back. So let's open this towards the camera. Open this. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, thank you. No problem. We appreciate you choosing Sense Labs. That's really nice of them. All right. Quick start. That's good to know. Got here cable remote pen. Quick start. I'm going to use that for sure. That is the tablet. Not light. It's kind of hefty. I like it. Scratch. There you go. You got your soft little cushiony thing so it doesn't slide on your deck. You got a little groove here to pick it up. That's actually pretty cool. You got your three buttons here. Logo and that is it. Let's put it on the side here. And it is not sliding. What is that? That's cool. Logo here. Velcro bag to put the whole thing in there. And it's very soft inside to avoid some scratching. That's actually really nice. That's some high quality stuff there. Very soft actually. Impressed. That's cool. What do we have here? I'm assuming that is the remote. We got a sticker. We got pen tablet warranty policy. OK. There we go. That is the remote. That is cool. You got again, we're here to grab it. You got your jog dial button. Another button. Lots of buttons. I'm very intrigued. I'm very intrigued. I have to say. There we go. Please connect the computer. Install the driver. Will do. You got a little bit of a light here. I'm already very smitten. Gadgety stuff with the yellow light. Yellow clearly. I'm right now very into yellow. Then in here, it's another heavier case. The build quality already. Not that I'm an expert in build quality. But sometimes you get stuff you can like this kind of plastic. You kind of cheat the buttons. Kind of clickety like eh. This already feels very high quality. Here's the case. Look at that. Ooh, nice. So it comes with a bigger sized stylus. But then also a slim version, which I prefer. That's very cool. You got a USB and a USB-C. Well, that's USB-C adapter, I see. Nibs. Nibs. You got different nibs. Ooh, felt nibs, which I prefer in terms of. It's not as slippery. I've gotten more used to these than these. At least on my walk-in tablet. That's a really nice case though. Again, very impressed already. And then here we must have the cables. We have USB-C to USB cable. There is another USB to USB-C cable. Okay, so we have an L-shaped type of thing. And we have a straight one. Oh, medium-sized. Oh, you artist's glove. Medium is going to be too small. And I'm also a lefty. Let's put it on anyway. I always see people wear these. And too bad that I can't. So anybody making these, I appreciate that this is in here. And the majority of people are right-handed. But I'm a lefty. It's too bad. I would love to get that actually on my left side. Hold on, let's try something. If I go inside out, it's a bit of a cheat. But it works, kind of. I don't know. I can also use it like this. So it might be a first time. But anyway, technically right-handed people, this is the medium-sized. But as a package, as an overall, what you get, this is very cool. You got your case. You got your remote. You got your glove and you got all the cables. And then you got your tablet. Fits in here without any scratches. And an extra pocket in here as well. For the rest, all that stuff in there. So you pack your cables. The remote, the glove, and this. Is that gonna fit? It totally does. And we would assume so if that's what they manufactured. But it's cool. So first impression, I'm very impressed. It seems really high quality. I'm very intrigued by that remote. All the additional stuff you can get, they do different pens. I mean, this is definitely a comprehensive bundle. So let's fast forward and see what happened in terms of battery life, in terms of usage, and the drivers, and just, you know, do just the softer crash, all that good stuff that you wanna test. So let's fast forward. All right, fast forward to the future. And I've been using it now for quite some time. Quite some time, like a couple of weeks. And I got my thoughts listed here, pros and cons. And let's start with the best part. First, the quick keys are awesome. Just throwing that out there. They're great. Now for the test that I did, I used them with my Wacom drivers and everything installed, had some issues. And then I uninstalled the drivers, the Wacom drivers, still had some issues, but more on that later. Most of it was done without those drivers installed. And it's purely sense labs in terms of, you know, they're set up and I'll blend in all the menus as well as I'm going through my list here. And speaking of which, the menu is great. There are a ton of details. I love that everything is specific to each pen. So like I showed before, you got both of them here. The quality, the build quality is great. The pens are great. I've been using actually the thicker one, even though I prefer the thinner one, because the thicker one I didn't notice has an extra button. And now it sounds like nothing. Well, having that extra thing, I like having extra gadgety things, but I've configured this to work with Keyframe Pro for critiquing things where I can activate it, do onions getting on and off before and after, deleting frames, undo, like everything is really cool. I gotta say, even though I am more used to the thinner one that's also lighter, it's well built. It also has that rubbery front part where it doesn't slip. I like it a lot, but I've been using actually the thicker one more with this tablet. But you can customize both. You got a ton of options in terms of what you wanna assign it to. Same with the tablets, you can go through lights, pressure sensitivity, there's a bunch of stuff. So the menu system, I think that's a big pro in terms of the options, just how you can customize everything. I think that's really comparable to Wacom. And to be honest, I actually prefer it than Wacom. There I say, I think the build quality and everything in Wacom is always great. The software is good, but I found that with SenseLabs, the software is better. Just in terms of what you can customize and things you can add to it, I don't know, there's something that felt really, the layout was nice, the menu is nice. I like that a lot. That being said, since I'm gonna compare this to Wacom since I've used Wacom for so long, the moment I use the pen on that tablet, the scrolling of it felt stroby and kind of choppy. And I don't know if that's subjective and I've tried to do some tests to compare if you just go straight and in circles and move things around. There's something that the moment I use my Wacom one, it just feels smoother. There's something about that. And I think I've been going through some other reviews and they say it's a lot about the pen combination with the software, but mostly the pen. And the interesting thing is you can actually use the SenseLab tablet with Wacom pens and not just the newer ones, even the old one for my other Wacom tablet. So that's interesting too, just in case you want that, but they don't have that extra button. So anyway, but generally I felt like the moment I was using the SenseLab, it was just something not as smooth when it came to the scrolling, the cursor moving around, there's something that was subtly off. Also this might just be because it's new, I don't know, I've tried it with the plastic one, I've tried it with the felt tip as well. But when you click on something, it immediately registers a click. It's very sensitive where, and that changes in the duty level and it didn't fix it, at least for me, where you click on something and immediately things that you're sliding over. So when you click, it thinks it's like a click and hold or slide. So it doesn't register as an actual click where I ended up having a lot of multiple clicks. So it's almost like a double click. I do want to keep playing with this, but I mean, I've had it for some time and I tried super sensitive not, I tried a bunch of stuff and it didn't work. But at the same time, it could be user error. I don't know. So if you have this lookout for that, that could be something. I went after that back to the Wacom and it was just better. Maybe it's because the way this has been like really broken down. I don't know if you can see the tip here, the nibs just works for me, but. So again, could be user error, could be something that I need to keep tweaking, but after a couple of weeks, it was still an issue. Also, my setup, my review is gonna be for something where I have four screens. So keep that in mind. And it's not like a drawing review where I show the lines. I'm gonna put the link in the description to other reviews that have really detailed things in terms of actually drawing, since that's not my main thing. For me, it's mostly animating and just overall setup and workflow. Just keep that in mind. So my setup has four screens. So maybe that also has something to do with some of the issues that I have. So for instance, my fourth monitor frequently wasn't recognized. I had to open up the menu where in Windows you can adjust where the monitors are. So they'll kind of move it a little bit up or down and then hit the apply and then it will get recognized. But a reinstall of the software, fix that. More on that later. And as I'm checking my list, the three button pen. Yeah, three button pen is awesome. Just like the quick keys, which I'll get to later. I really like having an extra button. It's really great. I think Wacom competitor there sounds something to consider. The tablet overall feels nice. I think there's nothing where I felt like it was, it was just different in terms of handling. I think the production quality is still really good. And like the little grooves as you saw in the unboxing, you can pick it up easier. Just overall it's great. I didn't feel a massive difference, but again, I'm not also constantly drawing. So again, for my reviews, a different point of view, but in terms of straight comparisons, I think they're super similar. I actually like that the buttons are at the top. So you only have three buttons on the tablet for some people that might not be enough, but again, awesomeness. But what I like about the top one is that it's not favoring left or right side. I mean, you could, I guess, turn the tablet, but just in case you don't want to, because of where the cable is and everything, I just like that it's at the top. You can draw and quickly move up. I didn't have any issues with that. And it was okay for me because it wasn't favoring left or right, because I'm a lefty. Now, speaking of tablets, the charge was pretty good. Actually, the charge felt longer than the Wacom one. Because as you remember, get it, take this guy out. That's the intuos. I just have it always cable just because towards the end it just, the battery dies. And I felt like with the SenseLab, it's rated for 16 hours, but I felt like this was just all day and I have constant usage. It was just fine. You had to charge it overnight, but overall it felt better. If you take this on the go, they both are wireless, same with the pen, you don't need any batteries. Definitely good. For my constant setup, I just have it cabled in. And I also did not see any changes with the tablets connected to a cable in terms of the choppiness and some of the other issues that I haven't talked about later, which I hope that would solve it. Now, going back to this here, I love it. Love that you have a screen. Love that you can see what you're using this for, because again, I would frequently forget and stuff. That's why I like, again, like my stream deck and the loop deck that I'm testing now because you can see what's going on. It also changes the screen. So depending on what software you have, this is a Keyframe Pro. And if I switch to just regular desktop, you can see how things switch. This is my regular desktop. And then you also have the color change. So for Keyframe Pro, I have something where I can click on this and it changes the function. So basically, my scroll wheel is set to moving forward, like framing forward and back, and you can change the sensitivity. And then I click on this. And basically what I did was when I click on this, it switches this to zooming in. So I can quickly zoom into my Play Blast or whatever, like critique something and then click on this and it switches back to what I had before. So that kind of workflow is really great. And you can see with the color changes how you can remember also by color what where you are. So big fan of this. I use it like this. So it's flat like that. So I have the hand on this and I go like that. You can change the screen. So it can be like this, it can be like this, wherever you want it. I didn't notice that because I'm not usually, my hand is flat on the keyboard. I was a bit more raised with this. Use it like that. And I noticed a little bit of something here. Again, you workflow, you have to kind of adjust your posture for everybody. It's gonna be a bit different, but massive fan of this. The only downside on this is that I wish that when I would do this and go that it would frame through the wheel stops fairly quickly. And it's not like you're on an iPhone and you can go, this goes down. I wish for me, I wish I could just go like this and it will kind of scroll quickly and keep scrolling till the end. But if you do this, it just goes a couple of frames and stops, couple of frames and stops versus this goes through the whole thing. That's the only thing in terms of how I would use in terms of animation. But overall, I love this thing. Now, spoiler, I'm not sure if the tablet works for me because one thing towards the end, I'm gonna mention at the very end, but you can use this just separately. Right, so you can still use your walking tablet and just that. And I think that's gonna be a setup for my other computer because I am in love with the Stream Deck, Loop Deck setup that I have. It's really tricky. It's really tricky to decide because it's also nice and small and compact. I don't know, I have too many gadgets, but it's really good. I think this is the main draw for me, this and the three button pen. That's a really big plus. That being said, it's clickity. You can kind of put your finger there and kind of click on it. But so if you have your mic close by if anybody that's recording, there's still clickity sounds with most gadgets that have that. So watch out, you might hear that when you click on it and you record it. The tablet is not a touch tablet. I've mentioned that before. This tablet does not have that. It's got the caveat. It's again, generally a really good tablet. Now, why am I not going to continue using it right now? So I believe what I'm gonna say all now from now on is just me and it shouldn't be a deterrent for the tablet, to be honest. But my biggest thing is that first off, I can use things and then suddenly my Logitech keyboard goes crazy where it just changes all of the button configurations. I can't use the keyboard anymore. The keys are just completely differently mapped and that hasn't happened ever. Only since I installed the SenseLab software and it has that USB dongle for the Bluetooth. So maybe the Bluetooth dongle with Logitech is conflicting. I don't, again, this might just be very me set up, but it's a pain. And it took me a while to figure out that you just hit the Windows key and that fixes it. And I don't know what to cause this and I don't know what that layout configurations of my keyboard, no idea. But that's the thing that continuously shows up and that's an issue. Again, it's a quick fix, but you can be in the middle of something and suddenly you're in the middle of typing something and it activates a bunch of stuff and it's really disruptive to doing work and reviews, not a fan. But it's not crippling. The crippling problem is that every now and then and I thought, I wrote it down here at first, I thought that it was because I was streaming YouTube, I had a Zoom thing, like a recording Zoom, had a bunch of stuff going on and maybe I was just overloaded in terms of software. But then I closed a bunch of stuff where pretty much nothing except my review stuff and it still happened. And this is for me, the deal breaker. You're working with it and suddenly the mouse goes crazy. There is an insane lag where I do things like what is going on and then I stop and then the mouse just goes, hmm, wait, I don't know how long until it catches up to what you did. That one is massive and it's unusable. And I tried a bunch of stuff, I tried uninstalling things again, drivers, welcome drivers on and off. So unfortunately I can be in the middle of a review drawing things or doing something and suddenly it goes absolutely crazy. That combination with the keyboard, unfortunately the tablet for me right now is a no, I can't use it. But again, I feel like this is my setup but I wanted to keep testing it to see if it's something that I can fix. But you don't wanna buy something and immediately have to go and contact customer support and do a bunch of stuff. How does this work? If you just buy it, disclaimer, I didn't buy this for review purpose, I got it. But say you just get it and you're like, I gotta figure some things out until you gotta go the next step in contacting tech support. So just as a caveat for me, it just stuff is just not working. But then other reviews it did. So again, that's why I feel like this is my problem and this is not a tablet problem. So I'm gonna leave it at that. I'm gonna email the company and maybe they can help me with this and then I'll put it in the pinned comment. So I do wanna see if that's something that can be fixed. It's firmware upgrade or something. Now you might say that's not fair. Maybe, you know, the overall review is a bit negative. It's not, it's a really, really like it. Again, fantastic. This is absolutely system seller. I love this. It has the jog here and the screen, fantastic. The pen, three buttons, fantastic. This as a bundle, all the stuff you get, the build quality, it's really great. The tablet is great. Everything is really great. So just overall my review, if you don't have a setup like this and it works for you like it did for other reviewers, I give this two thumbs up. It's really, really good. It's absolutely comparable to Wacom. Unfortunately for me, I can't keep using the tablet. I'll keep using the quickies. And I'm very curious what you think. If you are using this and you had similar problems, let me know. Let's chat. If you're using it yet, no problems. Let me know as well. I'm very curious. It's fairly new company and the reviews have been very favorable and I totally agree. It is an absolute competitor and I can see this company going far in terms of updates. Maybe we're doing a Cintiq type thing where you have a screen that it's really, really high quality except for me. I know it sucks. I wish, I wish it was, but I have so many things loaded and so many things plugged in, so many different screens. I really think this is my problem. But I don't know. I will let you know if there's an update and I can fix things, I'll put it in the pinned comments. Thanks for watching till the very end and it's a bit of a lengthy clip. I don't want it to be absolutely honest in terms of what happened to me. Curious what happened to you again. Let me know. And if you like those kind of clips, as always it's weird towards the end. But what you're going to do, I'm going to say like and subscribe, mainly subscribe, hit that bell button. So you don't miss any more uploads and reviews. So thank you for watching till the very end. As always, if you're still here, thank you for your patience. I appreciate it. And that's it. Thank you.