Pen Pressure Test

This pen pressure test reads your pen the way a drawing app does. Draw on the pad and the line gets wider and shifts from green to orange as you press harder, while the readouts show pressure from 0 to 100%, tilt, twist, hover, the barrel buttons and the eraser, and how many times a second the pen reports. A chart plots the pressure of each stroke, the steps readout shows how finely pressure reaches the browser, and the line jitter test measures wobble along a ruler line. It works as a stylus pressure test with Wacom, Huion, XP-Pen and Gaomon tablets, Surface Pen and other Windows pens, Apple Pencil on iPad and Samsung S Pen.

How to test pen pressure

1. Connect the tablet or pair the pen, and install its driver if it has one. Apple Pencil and S Pen need nothing extra.
2. Hold the pen just above the pad without touching. Pen seen and Hovering light up if your pen reports hover.
3. Draw a long stroke that starts with a feather light touch and ends pressing firmly. The line should widen smoothly and the chart should rise as a smooth ramp.
4. Tilt the pen left, right, toward you and away. The dot on the tilt dial follows if the pen senses tilt.
5. Press each barrel button and turn the pen over to the eraser end, if it has one. Each lights its signal.
6. Switch to Line jitter, lay a ruler along the dashed line and draw slowly along it.
7. Press Copy results to save a report for support or a warranty claim.

What the readouts mean

The pressure stays at 50% or the line never changes width

A browser reports 50% for any input that has no pressure. If the pad warns that you drew with a mouse, the tablet is sending mouse input. Check these in order:

1. Windows Ink is off. Browsers on Windows read pens through Windows Ink. Turn it on, then reload this page:
   • Wacom: open Wacom Tablet Properties, select your pen and tick Use Windows Ink on the Mapping tab.
   • Huion: open the HuionTablet driver, go to the Digital Pen page and tick Enable Windows Ink.
   • XP-Pen: open the XP-Pen driver, go to the pen settings and tick Windows Ink.
2. The driver is missing, old or clashing with another one. Drivers from a different tablet brand can grab the pen. Uninstall every tablet driver, restart, then install only the newest driver from your tablet maker's site.
3. The pen is set to mouse mode. Wacom has a Pen and Mouse mode switch on the Mapping tab. Set it to Pen.
4. The driver lacks permission on a Mac. Open System Settings, then Privacy & Security, and allow the tablet driver under Accessibility and Input Monitoring.
5. The stylus has no pressure sensor. Rubber or mesh tip styluses work like a finger, and some active styluses such as the Logitech Crayon sense tilt but not pressure.
6. The pen is faulty. Wacom's own check is in Wacom Tablet Properties, About, Diagnose: Pressure should move from 0% to 100% as you press. In the Huion driver, the Pressure Test area on the Digital Pen page does the same job. If the driver's check shows no pressure either, the pen needs repair or replacement.

Pressure works here but not in your drawing app

When this test shows a smooth ramp, the pen and driver work, and the drawing app is the problem.

• Photoshop: turn on Always use pressure for size in the options bar, or set Size Jitter to Pen Pressure under Shape Dynamics in Brush Settings. A yellow warning next to Pen Pressure means Photoshop gets no pressure. On Windows you can switch Photoshop from Windows Ink to WinTab by saving a plain text file named PSUserConfig.txt containing UseSystemStylus 0 in the Adobe Photoshop Settings folder for your version, inside %AppData%\Adobe, then restarting Photoshop. If your version has a WinTab option under Edit, Preferences, Tools, use that instead.
• Krita: open Settings, Configure Krita, Tablet settings, and switch Tablet Input between WinTab and Windows 8+ Pointer Input. The Tablet Tester on the same page shows whether Krita receives pen events.
• Clip Studio Paint: open File, Preferences, Tablet, and switch between Wintab and TabletPC.

Pressure jumps to 100% or never gets there

Look at the chart for your last stroke. A smooth ramp is healthy. A line that hits 100% early and stays flat means the pressure curve is too soft, and a line that never passes about 70% means it is too firm. Set the curve in the driver: Tip Feel on Wacom's Pen tab, or the pressure curve in the Huion and XP-Pen drivers. On a Surface Pen, the Surface app has a pen pressure setting. A worn or wrong nib also changes the feel, so fit a new nib made for your pen.

Lines wobble or jitter

Jitter is fine, fast wobble in the line that you see most on slow diagonal strokes. Lay a ruler on the pad and draw along the dashed guide in the line jitter test: the readout shows the sample to sample noise, and the chart shows how far the line strays from straight.

• Interference. Move phone chargers, power bricks and speakers away from the tablet. Pen tablets work through a magnetic field, and nearby electronics add noise.
• Power and cables. Plug the tablet into a port on the computer itself rather than a hub, use the original cable, and try a laptop on battery to rule out a noisy charger.
• Drivers. Update the tablet driver. Some updates change smoothing.
• Smoothing in apps. Photoshop has Smoothing in the options bar, Krita has stabilizer modes in the brush tool options and Clip Studio has Stabilization. These hide light jitter in your art.

Pen displays have extra checks for offset and screen coverage in the drawing tablet test.

The pen lags or strokes start late

• Press and hold on Windows. Windows waits to see whether a held pen means right click, which delays the start of strokes. Open Control Panel, then Pen and Touch, select Press and hold, press Settings and untick the right-click option.
• Battery. Surface Pen and other Bluetooth pens slow down and drop strokes on a low battery. Charge it or fit a new battery. A pen that keeps disconnecting points to a bluetooth not working problem on the computer.
• USB and power saving. A tablet that drops out or lags often needs a different USB port; the usb device not recognized fixes cover ports and power settings.

Buttons, eraser and hover

Drivers often turn barrel buttons into keyboard shortcuts. A button set to a shortcut never reaches the page as a pen button, so set it to right click in the driver to test it here. Express keys on the tablet send keyboard shortcuts too, and the key tester shows which key each one sends. The eraser end lights Eraser end when the driver reports it. Hover works on most pen tablets up to about 10 mm above the surface, and on iPads that support Apple Pencil hover.

What a browser pen test cannot measure

The browser receives pressure as a number from 0 to 1 after the driver's pressure curve, so it cannot measure force in grams or the lightest touch that registers in grams. On Windows it sees 1,024 pressure steps at most. The report rate is what the browser receives: with raw samples it matches the pen, otherwise the screen's refresh rate caps it. Delay between the pen and the line in milliseconds needs a high speed camera. Touch rings, dials and express keys work through the keyboard, not the pen. For finger input on the same screen, use the touch screen test.

Pen pressure test questions