The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2024
Wacom Movink 13: its first OLED pen display is 66% thinner and still pen-accurate
Wacom's first OLED pen display weighs 420g and is 4mm thin — 66% thinner than its predecessor — with sub-millisecond latency for battery-free EMR pen input.
Wacom
What it had to solve
Wacom's professional pen displays were precise but thick and heavy, so creatives used them at a desk. OLED was the route to a thin, light, cool-running display, but its driving signals interfered with the electromagnetic-resonance technology behind Wacom's battery-free pens, and the fault was invisible to the naked eye.
How it works
Wacom's pen displays gave digital artists precision but kept them tied to a desk: LED panels needed backlights that added bulk and heat, so there was no thin, light display tablet a creative could happily pack. For the Movink 13 Wacom chose OLED for the first time in its history, betting that dropping the backlight would let the whole product shrink.
The bet created an engineering fight. OLED panels interfered with EMR, the electromagnetic-resonance technology that powers Wacom's battery-free pens, and the disruption was invisible to the eye. Engineers used a high-speed camera to capture the exact moment the pen signal broke, held workshops with display vendors, and then re-tuned display, pen and touch in endless cycles — each adjustment to one subsystem forced corrections in the other two.
The result, announced in April 2024, was the thinnest and lightest pen display Wacom had ever built: 420 grams and 4mm at its thinnest point, 66% thinner and 55% lighter than the Wacom One 13 Touch, powered and connected by a single USB-C cable. The panel kept sub-millisecond pen latency and earned Pantone color validation, and the thinner stack brought near-zero parallax, so the drawn line sits almost exactly under the nib.
Independent reviewers found the promise held: the OLED was bright and vibrant, the tablet stayed cool after a full day, and it packed easily beside a laptop. As PetaPixel's July 2024 review put it, OLED made pen displays cheaper, smaller, brighter and far more travel-friendly — 'the future of pen displays will definitely be OLED.'
Why it lands
- Choosing OLED first and solving the interference second kept the product brief pure: portability could not come at the cost of pen accuracy, Wacom's core promise.
- Treating the conflict as a shared engineering problem forced display, EMR and touch teams to work together daily instead of each optimizing its own part.
- The thin stack that caused the engineering difficulty also produced near-zero parallax, turning a compromise into a drawing improvement.
- A single USB-C cable for power and video made the travel story real rather than a spec-sheet claim.
What it did
The Movink 13 launched in April 2024 as Wacom's first OLED pen display: 420g, 4-6.6mm thick, 66% thinner and 55% lighter than the Wacom One 13 Touch, with sub-millisecond pen latency, 100,000:1 contrast and Pantone color validation. Reviewers confirmed the bright OLED, lack of heat and travel-friendly footprint, with one concluding that the future of pen displays would be OLED.
What you can take
When a promising new component breaks your core technology, don't weaken the promise to make it fit: treat the interference as the design problem and re-tune both sides until neither is compromised.
Since then
After the April 2024 announcement, reviewers on both sides of the Atlantic tested the Movink 13 and confirmed the OLED panel's color and the 420g footprint, while noting the tradeoffs Wacom had accepted: 1080p resolution and a separate stand for angled use. The launch landed days before Apple's first OLED iPad Pro, sharpening competition in portable creative displays. For Wacom, Movink opened a new product line and marked the company's first OLED display, with its engineers describing the EMR re-tuning as the hardest balance the pen team had faced.
Sources
- The very best in every respect: no compromise in achieving the best pen experience
- Wacom says its first OLED drawing tablet is cool and skinny
- Wacom's Movink 13 OLED Pen Display Is Made for Traveling Photographers
- Wacom Movink 13 Display Tablet Review: A Bright and Vibrant Portable Tablet for Photographers
spotted an error? The archive wants to know.
Your turn
You just read one. Describe the brief you are staring at, and see who has been given the same problem.
Free account · 3 free questions · no card