If you’re looking for a fairly affordable tool for digital drawing, the upcoming Surface Go looks like a viable option. Microsoft doesn’t seem to have a coherent strategy for the Surface line, but this is effectively the replacement for the Surface 3 (cheaper, smaller, and less powerful than the Surface Pro 3) which they discontinued a couple years ago when they upgraded the Pro model to version 4.

I used a Surface 3 for about a year, before the screen started going bad on it. (I bought it used, so no warranty.) It ran Clip Studio Paint well, for most things. Using complex brushes, or high stabilization caused it to lag, but straightforward sketching and inking went smoothly. The CPU in this model has better benchmarks than the one in the S3, so this should do a little better. I wouldn’t recommend trying to run Photoshop on it… that’s getting bloated.

My biggest frustration with the S3 was the size of the screen, and this one is even a little smaller: 10 inches instead of 10.8. That means working zoomed out more than I’d like, or not seeing the whole panel. The Surface Pro models are better, with their 12+ inch screens. 14 or 15 would be ideal for me… anything bigger than that I wouldn’t take advantage of, and it wouldn’t be portable anymore.

The $400 price tag of this is really attractive. But it doesn’t include the $100 pen (which sucks by the way). It also doesn’t include the keyboard, but for a drawing tablet that’s a waste of money.

CNET has a more general preview of it.