Gaomon PD 1561 (1560) review – Perfect Drawing Tablet for beginners

Drawing tablets are getting cheaper every day. Gone are the days when a simple entry-level drawing pad costs hundreds of dollars and beginners and hobbyists had no access to it.

New brands are showing up with their new drawing devices which are not only as good as premium tablets but also much cheaper.

In this Gaomon PD 1561 review, we would take a deeper look at the features that you get with this tablet. By the end of this article, you would know whether you should buy this tablet or not.

Features and specifications

Features often do not tell the full story of the device. But still, they give us the basic idea of what we are looking at. Here is the list of everything the Gaomon PD1561 has to offer.

Gaomon PD 1561 – Design and Build Quality

Gaomon Pd 1561 has gone with classical design. The screen is located on the right-hand side with the shortcut buttons are present on the left. This design allows you to draw and use shortcut buttons at the same time with your other hand.

All the connectivity ports are placed on the right-hand side of the tablet. The ports and the wires are easy to access and do not interfere with the drawing area of the tablet. The tablet is made of high-quality plastic which makes the tablet feel strong and hefty.

Screen and Drawing Area

A screen is one of the most important components of the drawing tablet. This is where everything happens. Gaomon PD 1561 is an entry-level drawing tablet but still comes with a very impressive display.

It has a resolution of 1920 x 1080p, with an aspect ratio of 16:9. Some artist really likes this aspect ratio as it gives them more space around the canvas to put floating menus.

During drawing, you have to sit really close to the screen. If there are large pixels on the screen, you start to feel eye strain. A full HD panel on a 15-inch screen looks very sharp and clear making the tablet very comfortable to work on.

The screen produces very vibrant colors and has support for the 74% NTSC color space. The screen is bright enough to be clearly visible in a bright indoor environment.

The IPS panel used on this screen gives you a viewing angle of 178°(degrees) with no weird color shifts when you look at the screen at an off-angle.

Tablet stand and how to install it

Gaomon PD 1561 comes with a standard tablet stand along with all the accessories to install it. There are four mounting points on the back of the tablet on which the stand can screw in. You simply screw the bolts to the tablet stand and you are ready for action.

The mounting points are the standard mounting grooves which can also mount third-party tablet stands. The provided tablet stand has plastic and metal construction making it strong. It can go from 20° to 80° without losing stability.

To stop the tablet from collapsing when applied with extended pressure the stand has a locking mechanism that holds the tablet firmly. There are rubber pads on the leg of the stand which does not let the tablet slip on the table.

The thing which was missing from the tablet is – It does not have any rubber material at the base of the tablet. Which leads to the tablet slipping on smooth surfaces.

Shortcut Buttons

The tablet comes with a total of 10 shortcut buttons which are arranged in “two groups of four” and “two buttons in the center”. The buttons are indented into the surface and have a soft distinct click sound which feels satisfying.

The buttons can be fully customized to the shortcut of your choice in the tablet settings.

The only complaint with the button is that – they have no markings to distinguish one button from the other. Some tablets come with buttons that have raised dots and dashes, in order to identify them without looking. This can be useful if you are drawing in a dark environment.

Gaomon PD 1561 Stylus

A stylus is the most important part of a drawing tablet. No matter how good the tablet is, a bad stylus can really ruin your drawing experience. It is very important for a good tablet to have a good stylus.

The Gaomon PD 1561 comes with an excellent stylus that has a great build quality and very comfortable to hold.

The included pen is a battery-free stylus and comes with the pressure sensitivity of 8192 levels as well as support for tilt sensitivity.

Now as much as the tablet manufacturers try to tell you “pressure sensitivity is all you need to know” – that is not enough to know how good the stylus performs. There are a lot of other factors that play a key role in making a stylus accurate.

Issues like parallax, wobbly strokes and inaccurate pressure bumps can really give you a rough drawing experience.

The Gaomon PD 1561 stylus has consistent and reliable performance. The lines are straight with no wobble issues in slow as well as fast speeds. The pressure curve is smooth with no inconsistent pressure bumps.

There is a slight hint of parallax in the pen, but to be honest, not even the very premium Wacom tablets are 100% free from parallax. On top of that, it is not as bad as what you see in other tablets in this range. So overall it gets a pass in the parallax department.

Stylus – Design and Build quality

The Gaomon PD1561 stylus is made of plastic and feels fairly lightweight. The front half of the stylus has a special silicon grip that helps with providing a better grip on sweaty hands. The pen has an ergonomic shape that makes it comfortable to use it for longer periods.

Buttons on Pen – Shortcut at your fingertips

Gaomon stylus comes with two buttons at the sides. The buttons are raised above the surface of the tablet to make them easy to press. On pressing it has a sharp click sound which indicates high quality.

By default, the shortcut buttons act as an eraser but you can change it to other shortcuts like “alt” to pick the color or any other key of your choice.

The Multipurpose Pen holder

A circular stylus can very easily roll off the table and get damaged. To stop this from happening the Gaomon PD 1561 comes with a pen holder. The pen holder is made of plastic but has a metal base which makes it stable.

You can either put your pen upright or lay it flat on the pen holder. The pen holder has a tiny hole at the back which helps to easily remove pen nibs. Opening the pen holder you will find extra pen tips – safely stored in tiny compartments.

How to connect your drawing tablet to the computer

Connecting the tablet from your computer is simple and straight-forward. The first thing you need to do is connect the given cable to the computer. After that download the driver from the official website and install it – and your tablet is ready to work.

The included cable comes with 3-in-2 design, where you have three cables coming out of one end and two cables from the other. There are two ports (mini-HDMI and USB-C) at the right edge of the tablet. The other three cables connect to a mini-HDMI and a full-size USB port of the computer. The third cable connects to the power adopter.

If your laptop or computer does not have all the ports required you can get a USB hub (Amazon).

One of the main benefits of this kind of arrangement is – it reduces wire clutter on your desk and the cables do not intrude around your working surface. The wire itself is thick and strong and generally last a long time.

Driver – The control unit

The operating system of the computer is not that good at understanding the pen, pressure, and tilt data of the stylus. The driver is a program that communicates with the computer and helps it understand the tablet data. Without the driver, the computer will treat your tablet like an ordinary second monitor.

You can program the shortcut buttons of the tablet as well as the pen to any key combo of your choice. The driver also gives you control over the pressure sensitivity and allows you to change the pressure curve which controls how hard you want to press while drawing.

Accessories – What you get in the box

As mentioned at the beginning of the review, the Gaomon PD 1561 comes with a lot of accessories. Here is a list of everything that you get in the box.

Portability – Can you travel with the tablet?

In short, the Gaomon PD 1561 is a semi-portable device. Why semi-portable you ask, here is why.

The Gaomon PD1561 is not a standalone drawing tablet which means it needs to be connected to a computer in order to work.

To put it simply – Gaomon PD1561, like most other display tablets in the market, is just a screen with stylus support and cannot work without connecting to a computer.

Summary – Is Gaomon PD 1561 right tablet for you

A good stylus and a sharp, color-accurate screen are the two basic requirements for a drawing tablet. The Gaomon PD1561 does a great job in both those areas.

It comes with a great stylus that is not only fast and accurate but also got a decent build quality and feels good to draw with. The previous version Gaomon PD1560 did not have the tilt recognition, which is present in the newer Gaomon PD 1561.

Next, the screen of Gaomon PD1561 is on par with tablets in its range. It has 1080p resolution, good color accuracy, and a great viewing angle. The only thing missing is the laminated displays, which some tablet-like XP Pen Artist 15.6 pro has, but that is not a deal-breaker.

There are programmable shortcut buttons on the tablet, the tablet stand is included in the box along with a tablet sleeve and a lot of other accessories.

Overall, you are getting a whole set of cutting-edge features on the Gaomon PD1561 – all at a reasonable price without compromising the build quality. So if you are looking for a good drawing tablet, you should definitely get the Gaomon PD1561 (Amazon).

Buy on Amazon →

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