Return of the Hudl.
Categories: artwork
Tags: Digital Art, Tesco, Hudl, LetsHudl, unboxing
Date: 09 October 2014 19:02:32
A year ago I had just come back from Eurogamer. Following a breathless week of tablet and screen art in London's Earl's Court arena (ring a bell?) the following morning the Hudl 1 was released and I went to the local Tesco to buy 7 of the 12 they had in stock.
Sounds excessive? Well. I was about to start leading a young people's tablet art workshop in the Lightbox, Woking, and I urgently needed more tablets. Buying Hudls was a risk but one I needed to take.
Turns out it wasn't a risk or, if it was, it was one that paid off beautifully. The Hudl (first generation) is a fabulous machine and they've served me well since I bought them. A huge range of kids and adults have used the tablets in all sorts of venues and all seven of the machines have held up to the prodding and poking and general art duties with aplomb. And, more tellingly, if I'm heading out with some draw time but nothing planned the Hudl is more often than not the tablet I pick up first.
Fast forward the clock to today which (sort of) saw the launch of the Hudl 2.
I'd phoned my local store and was told that all colours would be in stock (they weren't. Some were web only. More on that later). I was also told they'd be on sale at 8am. Which is when my son's school bus leaves so, logistically, the earliest I could get there was 9.30 am. I was slightly nervous that the one I wanted most (the orange Hudl) would be gone by the time I arrived.
As it was I needn't have worried. Not because the Guildford Tesco megastore had orange ones in stock, but all of their stock was still locked in a cupboard behind the Customer services desk. Twenty boxes of black or white bezel Hudl 2s sat, blissfully hidden from the customers who might want to buy one.
Bearing in mind it was the highly trumpted launch day: a little perplexing. Thinking back on it that's almost exactly what happened last year.
Unlike last year I had two choices of colour frame and I bought the white one (which I find keeps the eyes on the artwork when you're making pictures on a screen. Black allows your eyes to drift out on occasion). Which is a vague shame (I also bought a slightly off orange stylus to soften the blow) but I was very keen to spend the day drawing on it so it was a trade off. They had no screen protectors or cases so onwards it was (I was in London drawing at Shake Shack today :) Yum and fun).
Regardless. Review time!
First off. A tiny thing but the box is slightly less good than last time. Silly I know but I thought the packaging for the Hudl 1 was excellent and this time it's merely very, very good. I like the box, but last years felt just that little bit more like the box of a premier league product. The front flap was attached by magnets and lifted away in a beautifully clean fashion, the cardboard was thick and covered fully in glossy pack shot images.
It was probably a complete pain to make so I can imagine why it might have been simplified this time...
Secondly the screen comes with a matte screen protector/menu to the buttons around the screen. For a split second I thought that they had gone with a matte screen finish (not my favourite) but, again, not a worry. Once the sticker was removed there lay the glossy, glassy goodness, all waiting to be drawn on.
After a short while of inputting email addresses, choosing wifi, updating apps and so on I was ready to go. The setup was pretty smooth and painless and took, roughly, 1.25 coffees.
And then, all of a sudden, I was off :) The remains of the coffee was drained and I was heading towards a train to London, ready to draw.
The first pic was painted in Sketchbook Pro by Autodesk using a Dagi 501 stylus and a Pogo Sketch Pro, both of which worked beautifully on the screen. I'd first tried my go-to fabric stylus (the New Trent Arcadia) which inexplicably didn't work. This, I think, is a first... That stylus has worked on every screen I've ever tried it on. I'll carry on test driving styli on the screen soon and come back with a report on what does and doesn't work but, for the moment, the rubber tip (Pogo Sketch Pro, Wacom Bamboo, eBay styli) and the plastic tips (Dagi 501, Jot Classic) work well.
I painted a couple of pictures in Adobe Photoshop (but I can't share them yet, they'll be done for next week though) and had a lot of fun while doing so. Photoshop's a bit of a processor hog on a tablet and, as it does on nearly all tablets, it lagged a little when the brush was enlarged on a low opacity. But if the brush was full opacity I felt no speed problems and was happy enough using the app.
By 3.30pm I was needing to get the train back so I put the tablet away and headed for home. On the train I finished off the Marmite picture:
...and, once back in Guildford I sat on an almost stationary bus (the peril of living near one of the worst junctions in Surrey - hallo A3 turnoff) and drew this:
(both drawn in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro app).