Astropad studio - the best i’ve found, but not neccasarily great
The biggest issue for me is that whilst it can smoothly be used in some apps an pen presure can work, it often can be fiddly to get working, sometimes at the cost of other functionality.
To give an example in zbrush 2023 whilst trying to use this under the wintab, there is no pen pressure at all. when i switch to stylus, pen pressure starts working, but it is verry laggy, not following movements that accurately or smoothly. When i go to wm-event, i get smooth and accurate pen pressure and lines, but then certain buttons within the app like the move, scale and rotate tools dont funtion properly, almost like they are now cutting to the end of your movement rather than smotothly transistioning or following like you would expect from a move or zoom.
I believe i had something similar happen with krita too.
I think the issue is that this app doesn’t successfully/ fully tricks or does the right handshake to the pc to say hey i am a windows tablet like you really want it to.
But that is what you really want it to do.
You want this app to be fully seamless like a modern wacom or xp pen display and work exacly like that would, not fiddling in the settings, no compromising. You connect to the pc, you load the apps and it just works, you dont even have to think about it.
This app whilst better than others i’ve tried, isnt that.
I did contact astropad directly after dealing with the ai assistant about what i described here in zbrush, but ultimately never got a answer about it unforutunately.
So thats were i sit with this.
Its better than others i’ve used but it isn’t great or amazing, it’s not completely seamless to work and depending on app, you could have some compromises and fiddling around to deal with.
Whether you think it’s worth the perpetual or subscription liscense is gonna be dependent on these potential compromises and whether or not you think you can get enough ( not neccasairly better) from other, potentially cheaper alternatives.
