Hello DigiChaser.com readers, I have spent countless hours researching the best drawing laptops. I found a lot of information that was not always useful or accurate. At first glance, it looks like a laptop with a pen is the right solution for digital artists. But is it like that? The answer is NO, and I will explain why.
TOP 3 of my favorite Wacom EMR laptops
Artists who have done severe research know that laptops or tablets with Wacom EMR technology are best for drawing on the screen, but the fun thing is that almost all laptops and tablets do not have this technology in the marker. This raises the following question: If it’s so amazing, why is it so rear?
Simple Answer – Price
Price is the main criterion for why Wacom EMR is so rare in today’s laptops and tablets. By installing Wacom EMR technology into the device, its price increases exponentially, discouraging buyers from buying. Many big companies use cheaper alternatives like Wacom AES and N-trig technology.
What is Wacom EMR?
Wacom EMR is an Electro-Magnetic Resonance technology that has superior drawing hardware. A lot of graphic designers are using this technology without knowing it. The same active digitizers are used in Wacom tablets.
Wacom patents EMR technology, and it is a technology that consists of a layer of sensors that sits behind the device’s Liquid Crystal Display screen and a layer of hardened glass.
How does Wacom EMR work?
Using electromagnetic resonance technology, the pen display powers the pen by exchanging small radio signals. Scanning for the strongest signal, the screen locates where the nib makes contact. Corners included. The result is an accurate, battery-free pen, ready whenever you are. In addition to tracking the pen, EMR also establishes the precise tilt of the nib. This gives you even greater control and reduces offset.
We also discussed Wacom EMR technology in a previous article: Wacom EMR Tablet List.
Choose the right Laptop for Drawing.
Since the market is not rich in laptops with EMR technology, the choice is not very wide. However, you need to know that Samsung and Wacom have been partnering for 10 years now, ever since the first S Pen appeared with the huge-screened by the standards at the time Galaxy Note. And yes, if you buy or already own a Samsung product with have S pen – it probably uses Wacom EMR technology.
Below is a list of the top 3 laptops with can-stand heavy programs like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, CorelDraw, and other popular programs that digital artists use.
Top 3 Laptops with Wacom EMR – 2021
This is a carefully selected list during which we drew attention to the most important things.
1. ConceptD 7 Ezel – Your Mobile Design Station
Key specifications:
- Display: 15.6″ 4K UHD (3840 x 2160) widescreen LED-backlit IPS Corning Gorilla Glass
- Memory: 16GB DDR4 Dual-Channel 2666MHz Memory
- Processor: Intel Core i7-10750H 6-Core Processor (Up to 5.0 GHz)
- Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 with 6 GB
- Storage: 1TB NVMe SSD
Design
Hands down for Acer team with designated Concept D 7 laptop. Of course, there is the obvious one which is the hinge. It’s a pretty unique design. It essentially rolls over the hinge and can be placed in pretty much any orientation you like, you have positions – the traditional laptop clamshell look, but you can also tilt it up for a better drawing. Or you can drop it down for a bit more ergonomic drawing or even have it touch the surface for an excellent dry experience. You can also lay it flat like a tablet or fold it over internally to show your work off to other people.
Performance
With this model, we have an Intel Core i7-10750H 6-Core Processor (Up to 5.0 GHz), an eight-core 16-thread chip, and an RTX 2060 for graphics which is kind of insane. In terms of RAM, this model has 16 GB, so you can get up to 32 or even ECC memory if you go with the Pro models, and you have a terabyte of SSD storage as well as you’d expect, that’s plenty in terms of raw horsepower, and for creative workloads, it does well.
Display
This is a Pantone validated display with is 100 percent adobe RGB covered IPS panel with a custom calibration pre-install, with means the colors are vibrant, beautiful, and accurate and means that if you want to do any level of creative work from illustration sites, more photo, video editing or 3d modeling’s you’re going to have a perfect time with it, it’s also a touchscreen with 4096 pressure sensitive levels using Wacom EMR stylus that’s hidden in a little cubby hole on the right side of the Laptop.
Ports
In terms of connectivity, namely Thunderbolt, three ports connect fast external storage or external graphics or even just displays and hubs. And speaking of displays, you get a full-size DisplayPort connection on this rare but quite lovely. You will also get a full-size HDMI. Ethernet and DC are also in a headphone jack to a USB Type-A port and a full-size SD card reader, which is a full-size full depth reader, which means you could leave an SD card locked in there while traveling without fear of it being broken in half.
Drawing
It is a drawing laptop, so everything is on a top level for this Laptop. Wacom EMR technology works flawlessly for this Laptop. The pen is a little too small for some users, and it is not a big problem because you can order another Wacom pen from different tables. No jitter or other annoying thing can disturb you from drawing.
Overall – Pros and Cons
Let’s talk about the pros and cons. The main pro is the convenience factor. The hinge makes it super easy to pull down and draw without flipping the whole device around. Of course, sometimes these gimmicks don’t work out, but here it does.
It’s also a beefier laptop with a graphics card in it. Many of these two in ones are built for lightweight speed portability, which makes them great for art, but if you want to use them for other things like 3d work or gaming or anything like that, then not so much, whereas this one excels in that category.
And then, of course, the pen and the quality of the pen and the smoothness of the lines and all that fun stuff. Got to throw that into the pros category as well. The biggest con is the price you want for the ultimate Windows drawing experience. Well, here you go, it now exists but man, do you have to pay for it. This will appeal to some people, but you don’t need a machine this powerful to make great art. Most art and drawing applications don’t need this much. So if you’re looking at the price and you’re completely terrified, I understand you don’t need a $2,500 machine to do similar things.
It’s a fantastic form factor. It’s a fantastic machine, but it might be too much for many illustrators.
2. Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 13.3 – Best Price for its Specs.
Key specifications:
- Display: 13.3” QLED Display
- Memory: 16GB DDR4 Dual-Channel 2666MHz Memory
- Processor: i7-1065G7
- Graphics card: Intel Iris Plus Graphics G7
- Storage: 512GB SSD
Design
It does not have unique hinges like ConceptD 7 Ezel, so if you want to feel absolute drawing pleasure, you need to use this laptop in tablet mode because, in normal laptop mode, there can be a lot of wobbles when the screen is touched. Bezels look good, as well; on the left-right on top is a bit of a prominent chin down towards the bottom. However, when you hold it in tablet mode, it gives you a place to rest your thumbs. Overall, it is a nicely designed laptop that can receive a lot of compliments from the surrounding people due to its unique blue color.
Performance
In terms of performance, everything I’ve thrown at this laptop has done well, and nothing has lagged. Nothing has been slow, and everything has been super responsive. When I use it, the fans don’t get that loud, which is nice. When I was doing intensive tasks with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator and playing games, fans remained silent. Battery life is impressive on this laptop. When I am doing light internet browsing, the battery stands for more than 15 hours, more than enough for almost every user.
Display
It has a 1080P Q LED screen and a fantastic display color pop. It looks vibrant in just about everything I’ve been looking at and doing in general. Everything looks so much better than a regular standard display. I’m enjoying this aspect of the laptop. This is a central selling point here, and we also have the 16 by 9 aspect ratio here.
Ports
You have a headphone jack, one of the USB-C slots, and a micro SD card slot for expandable storage on the left side. You have two more USB-C connectors: Thunderbolt connectors, a power button, and an integrated S Pen along the right side.
Best Laptop for Digital Art?
Wacom EMR technology makes drawing suitable. You can draw natural lines with it. At first, you can get into a bit of trouble when installing drivers for Wacom, but it is a lovely drawing tablet when it is ready.
Overall – Pros and Cons
Overall I have to say I’m a big fan of this laptop. And battery life’s been great. The display is perfect (obviously not a 4k display, but that battery life coincides with that screen display). Like I said before, the biggest gripe I have is that wobbling hinge. This laptop is one of the best cheap drawing tablets with a screen.
3. Samsung Notebook 9 Pro (Wacom EMR version) – Budget Version but still Hard Working Machine
Key specifications:
- Display: 13.3 Inches
- Memory: 8GB
- Processor: i7-7500U
- Graphics card: Intel HD Graphics 620
- Storage: 256GB SSD
Design
The Notebook 9 Pro has a pretty familiar design for Samsung. However, when we turn to the side here, we can see this brand new design that’s elegant looking. You know, every company is trying to develop their design language, which is Samsung. And it just looks excellent. It’s a fragile device. It’s a fragile device, and one thing I like about it is just how even though everything is straight lines everywhere, everything is parallel. It has skinny bezels, and you still get a webcam on top. Just an excellent design.
It has a 360-degree hinge, so you can use it in tablet mode, which is the best for artists.
Performance
We did very well in short on conventional work benchmarks, our GPU intensive tests, and surprisingly well on some of our CPU intensive tests. So I would say overall that the performance on this is excellent. One place where it stood out here was in battery life. It goes 590 minutes of life in our rundown video test, which is an excellent long time and should get you through a typical workday. The nice thing is that you can charge this laptop using a USB-C connected power bank which you might use for your phone now.
Display
It has 13.3 inches full HD display, which is Samsung technology – amoled. Very good. It gets around 350 nits of brightness.
Ports
On the laptop’s left side, you have two Type-C ports here, Thunderbolt 3, along with the headphone jack. You get another Type-C port on the right-hand side, just regular Type-C, though, and the power button combines with a fingerprint reader, so it’s all built into one. There is also a micro SD card slot, which is becoming increasingly rare on 13-inch laptops like this one.
Drawing
What would be a modern Samsung device without a pen? It wasn’t the tiny S-Pen that comes with their other models that fit into the device itself. The Samsung Notebook pro 9 S-pen has a more professional grip, and it works very well. It’s S-Pen technology, and it’s just excellent, very fluid.
Overall – Pros and Cons
Samsung tried to balance everything outright to give you good performance with good features without something too heavy or hot. So maybe it is not a performance beast like ConceptD 7, but its price and Wacom EMR technology make it a perfect laptop for artists.
Editor’s choice
If I had a big budget without thinking, I would choose the ConceptD 7 Ezel model, but at the moment, I don’t have this kind of money, so I prefer a cheaper Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 13.3. Maybe ConceptD7 models will become cheaper in the future, and then I will take one.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Do Wacom pens need to be charged?
If it is a pure Wacom pen, then the answer is – no. Because of Electro-Magnetic Resonance technology does not require additional energy unless it is S-PEN with integrated Bluetooth inside that requires battery power.
Can Wacom tablets work with laptops?
Yes, it is a cheaper way to have tools suitable for drawing. But it takes time to get used to drawing on a tablet. Although on the other hand, drawing on the screen, if you have always used a tablet before, also takes time.
What is an EMR touchscreen?
Wacom patented EMR technology, and it is a technology that consists of a layer of sensors that sits behind the device’s Liquid Crystal Display screen and a layer of hardened glass.
What is the difference between an active and passive stylus?
The main difference is that an active pen needs electronic components whose signal is picked up by a mobile device’s built-in digitizer and transmitted to its controller.
We hope you like this article, and if you have additional questions, you can always leave a comment or write to us in person.
