Tobio’s vs. Grabie: Which All-in-One Watercolor Kit Should You Buy?

The quick verdict

Want the most colors for the least money? Grabie. Forty-eight pans, a brush, and a real cold-press paper pad for $19.99 is a lot of kit for the price, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

New to painting and quietly worried you’ll give up by week two? The Tobio’s kit. Twelve colors picked to mix with each other, cotton paper, a water brush that carries its own water, a walnut wood palette, and a digital guide that tells you what to actually do with all of it. The trade is color count against a learning path — that’s the whole comparison.

Colors per dollar against guided learning

Here’s the thing nobody selling paint has much incentive to tell you: running out of colors is almost never what stops a beginner. What stops people is opening the box, painting one wash that goes muddy or buckles the paper, and quietly deciding they’re not creative.

I did the big-set thing myself when I started — bought colors by the dozen because more felt safer, then used the same six for about a year while the rest sat there looking decorative. The colors weren’t the bottleneck; knowing what to do with two of them was. So the question isn’t which box has more pans in it. It’s which box gets you to a finished painting you feel okay about.

Side by side

• Price: Tobio’s Kit $36 · Grabie All-in-One 48 $19.99.
• What’s included: Tobio’s — 12 paints, walnut wood palette, refillable water brush, cotton paper notebook, wristband towel, digital guide, gift box. Grabie — 48 paints, 1 brush, a 140 lb cold-press paper pad, and a swatch card.
• Colors: Tobio’s — 12 curated colors, chosen to mix. Grabie — 48.
• Guidance: Tobio’s — digital guide covering the core techniques. Grabie — none bundled (swatch card only).
• Reviews: Tobio’s — 4.8 stars across 6,801 reviews. Grabie — around 7 reviews on this specific set.
• Guarantee: Tobio’s — 30-day global return guarantee. Grabie — standard return and exchange policy.
• Shipping: Tobio’s — US-based. Grabie — ships from New Jersey and Asia, roughly 7 to 20 business days.
• Best for: Tobio’s — a beginner who wants guidance and reassurance. Grabie — a hobbyist who wants the most colors for the least money.

What Grabie does well

• The price per color is unbeatable. Forty-eight pans for $19.99 isn’t a gimmick, and nothing I sell competes on that number.
• The paper pad is real. A 140 lb cold-press pad is proper watercolor paper, not the token sheet a lot of cheap sets include — that matters more than most buyers realize.
• It’s a complete physical setup. Paints, a brush, paper, and a swatch card means you can start the day it arrives without a second purchase.
• It travels and photographs well. The design is genuinely nice, and there’s a reason it does so well on TikTok.

Grabie also sells larger sets, including a 100 and a 168 that comes with a coloring book. If maximum color variety for minimum money is what you want, that’s a good deal and you should take it.

Where the Tobio’s kit wins

Start with what’s actually in the box. The book is hardcover and holds 60 sheets of 300 gsm cotton paper. Being fair: 300 gsm is 140 lb — the same weight as Grabie’s pad — so neither kit cuts corners on thickness. What you’re paying the difference for is cotton, which is why the sheet takes a wash without going bubbly or buckling.

The palette is walnut wood in two magnetic halves that clip into a small block, strong enough to stay shut at the bottom of a bag. You split it, clip one half onto the book, and you’re painting — a design that came straight out of why the kit exists: I wanted to paint in cafés, in flower fields, and on my commute, couldn’t find anything small enough to carry, and built this instead.

The paint is 12 tubes — Venetian Red, Poppy Bloom, Sunset Orange, Lemon Yellow, Green Gold, Forest Green, Twilight Indigo, Glacier Blue, Electric Rose, Royal Plum, Titanium White, and Ivory Black. The water brush is refillable, so you fill it once and never need a water cup — the single thing that makes painting away from a sink realistic — and you wipe it on the towel-material wristband. Setup is under a minute; cleanup is a damp wipe.

You’re also not left to work it out alone. The kit includes a physical manual and a digital guide with step-by-step instructions, so the first wash isn’t a guess. That’s the piece a pan of 48 colors doesn’t have — and the piece that decides whether a beginner paints twice or once. The rest is assurance: 4.8 stars across 6,801 reviews (the Tobio’s kit review is an outside account), and a 30-day global return guarantee that makes trying watercolor low-stakes. New here? Read the watercolor for beginners guide first, browse watercolor kits for the range, or read the Tobio’s story.

Do you need 48 colors as a beginner?

Probably not, and I say that as somebody who owns far more paint than she uses. Twelve colors chosen to mix will teach you more than forty-eight chosen to look good in a tin, because mixing is the actual skill and a big set lets you skip practicing it — the reasoning is laid out in the guide to how to set up a palette.

The fair counterpoint: a big set is fun. Swatching forty-eight colors is a genuinely lovely afternoon, and enjoying your supplies is a real reason to keep painting. Once you know which colors you keep running out of, the 50-color paint set ($34) is the upgrade, and the artist brush set ($21.99) is where to go when one brush stops being enough. There’s more in our guide to watercolor supplies for beginners.

The honest weakness

Twelve colors is not forty-eight, and $36 is not $19.99. On color count and on price, Grabie wins both, and no amount of framing from me changes either number. The Tobio’s pigments are student-grade — which suits a beginner and suits painting for pleasure, and which will start to feel limiting if you get serious. The notebook is mini-sized because the kit is built to travel, so it’s the wrong buy if you want big sheets to work across all afternoon. And Grabie’s paper pad is a genuinely good inclusion at that price.

The bet Tobio’s makes is that guidance and reassurance matter more to a nervous beginner than color count. That’s a real trade, and for a confident hobbyist on a tight budget it’s the wrong one.