Anyone using a Wacom Cintiq or Huion Kamvas pen display with a M1 Mac Mini?

[aloper]

I’m thinking of creating a dedicated “design” workstation, with a Wacom Cintiq or new Huion 24 Pro, connected to a M1 Mac Mini. Mainly will be using Photoshop, Painter and a few other design apps. I’m wondering if anyone has experience, as far as performance goes with this kind of setup?

I may hold off through October to see if an updated Mac Mini is released but was wondering if the current Mini is capable enough…

 

[sunny5]

I have Kamvas 13 but here's the problem. M1 does not allow more than 1 display to use and a pen display is considered as a monitor so you won't be able to use a main monitor unless you are using both USB-C port and HDMI port. If you connect both displays on USB-C, one of them won't gonna work. It sucks but that's what Apple did.

Also, the HDMI port is extremely unstable and you will see a pinks screen of death or crash per day. It's a M1's problem. Not sure if they solved the problem after 11.5.2 updates but that's what happened to me. Since then, I never used HDMI port.

Other than connectivity issue or limitation, M1 Mac mini is totally enough. I don't think getting a higher end Mac will improve anything for drawing. But of course, if you do something complex designing, then it's a different story.

 

[aloper]

I have Kamvas 13 but here's the problem. M1 does not allow more than 1 display to use and a pen display is considered as a monitor so you won't be able to use a main monitor unless you are using both USB-C port and HDMI port. If you connect both displays on USB-C, one of them won't gonna work. It sucks but that's what Apple did.

Also, the HDMI port is extremely unstable and you will see a pinks screen of death or crash per day. It's a M1's problem. Not sure if they solved the problem after 11.5.2 updates but that's what happened to me. Since then, I never used HDMI port.

Other than connectivity issue or limitation, M1 Mac mini is totally enough. I don't think getting a higher end Mac will improve anything for drawing. But of course, if you do something complex designing, then it's a different story.

Thanks for the info…My plan is to use the mini exclusively with the new Huion 24 Plus as the main and only display…Connecting via USB-C. Just trying to decide to purchase a current mini or wait to see if an updated one is released, this fall…

 

[mp8]

x

 

[chumps]

I’m thinking of creating a dedicated “design” workstation, with a Wacom Cintiq or new Huion 24 Pro, connected to a M1 Mac Mini. Mainly will be using Photoshop, Painter and a few other design apps. I’m wondering if anyone has experience, as far as performance goes with this kind of setup?

I may hold off through October to see if an updated Mac Mini is released but was wondering if the current Mini is capable enough…

The M1's are the fastest computers you can use for most graphics apps, especially Photoshop since it's an older mostly single threaded app. It's also great for modern Mac-centric apps that fully use macOS graphics/CoreML/Metal API's.

I work on 5-10GB files up to 12K resolution 20+ layers no real issues.

A M1X will be slightly faster in Photoshop, and a lot faster for multithreaded apps which is more on the rendering side, so the price/wait probably won't really be worth it until new cores in a M2 or something.