Well, it looks like I'm headed for a Wacom or competitive product.
To get the FAIL out of the way, I downloaded the trial for Astropad Studio. First, at 79.99 USD ~per year~, it sure as heck better perform as well as a Wacom and it totally doesn't. There are several feature advantages of Astropad Studio over Standard (29.99 USD one-time purchase.) The biggest feature I was looking for was the ability to create custom keyboard shortcuts for the side bar. I created "command-N" and "command-T." Command-N is unresponsive. Instead of toggling the onion skin, Command T changes the selected preset in the preset window to the first preset that starts with the letter "T."
Obviously, there is a window Focus issue with Astropad shortcuts, because when I bring up the Astropad virtual keyboard, the keyboard shortcuts work, regardless of window focus in the app. In other words, the Astropad must send the command modifier differently from its virtual keyboard vs. its custom shortcuts implementation.
The other Astropad issue is dropped brush strokes and lag. I can't bother to figure out how to force a USB connection with Astropad…in fact, I can't tell if Astropad is connected via Wifi or USB. Astropad has a support doc on forcing USB, but I didn't want to bother with it if keyboard shortcuts were wonky anyway.
Sidecar isn't promising, either. That said, it connects USB, and the core sketching is smooth, and the pressure sensitivity seems fine. It seems barely sufficient. But, I'm pretty sure it's not picking up tilt, etc. But, don't quote me on that. For what it is, Sidecar seems to be smooth. But it's no Wacom replacement, and not a decent Studio Artist companion.
That said, until I figure out what tablet I want to buy, I will continue to sketch in Sidecar occasionally when I feel like it, as the action is smooth and responsive, if not full-featured.
I'm actually looking at the smaller XP-Pen Tablets now. I'm more interested in the procedural aspects of Studio Artist, so I don't really need to go full-on massive Cintiq. If anyone has preferences for 11"-16" Wacom clones, I'd love to hear about it.
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