Wacom Bamboo Pen and Touch
Posted by Notcot on Aug 13, 2010 in PCs & Laptops |
Product Description
Wacom BAMBOO PEN TOUCH PEN TOUCH TABLET EN CTH460EN Mice Graphics Tablets
- Two sensors for precise pen and Multi-Touch input
- Use a single finger for navigation and multiple
- Simple gestures make it easy to scroll zoom rota
- Pressure-sensitive pen tip for natural pen and b
- Battery-free ergonomic pen with two switches
Firstly, well done Amazon on an excellent service and super quick delivery. The Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch Tablet is excellent value for money in its price range for the purposes of sketching, creating art work, painting,creating animations, photo touch-ups and text/signature annotation etc. Providing of course that the user has the appropriate software to carry out these tasks. Of course ,if you are looking to use a pen and tablet for high-end professional applications, then you need to pay a lot more. Presented in excellent packaging, the box contains the tablet, pen, spare nibs, nib extractor, quick guide and driver CD. I would advise to download the latest drivers for your operating system from the Wacom web site as there have been some improvements since the CD was produced. The tablet is a very pleasing design which only takes up approx 10.5 x 7 inches on the desk including the pen holder. It can be used for either left or right handed operation. The active area of the tablet is scaled to the size of your monitor, so every corner of the screen can be accessed. The tablet has 4 buttons that can be customised to your needs. The pen feels very natural and very precise and has an eraser. When you register your tablet at Wacom, you can download free mini applets to get you started. From personal experience the kit works very well with Corel Painter Essentials 4 and Corel Paintshop Pro Photo X2. I am running Windows XP Pro SP3 with a USB Optical Mouse and PS2 Keyboard which co-exist with the Wacom tablet with no ill-effects. A word of warning though. Plug the Wacom tablet into a free USB port on your PC proper. I intially plugged mine into a 4 port USB Hub and the tablet went crazy, opening applications without me touching anything and when I surfed the web, all sorts of strange things happened.
Also, if you have a wireless router on your desk, keep it as far away as possible from the tablet and its USB cable as this again can cause interference. Some LCD high-frequency monitors can also cause interference if the tablet is too close. Move the tablet away or reduce the monitors refresh rate or resolution. Access the Bamboo Properties to play around with the pen and tablet settings to suit your needs. Apart from the little niggles mentioned above, this is an excellent product which I can highly recommend for both novice and intermediate users.
Rating: 5 / 5
This is the first graphics tablet I have ever bought, and its great so far.
I was excited to find it was delivered very quickly indeed despite the so called royal mail strike and it was amazon super saver delivery. Its so nice and is a breeze to use after 10 mins.
The packaging is nice and protects well.
The tablet itself is a good size, not too big or too small.
At one point during use of the product just after i got it out and started experimenting, It occured to me that if it went by pen and your fingers, while drawing with the pen your fingers might keep interfering with the cursor. Luckily Wacom know this and whenever the pen is close to the table, the pen takes prioty. Happy to find that out
Would give 4/5 for Size
5/5 for Style
5/5 for ease of use
3/5 for accessorys (extra nibs and pen holder attached to tablet)
5/5 for precission
Overall 5/5
Rating: 5 / 5
Finally I can talk about this product. I received my tablet about 2 weeks ago. This was a speedy service as I received it the following day after placing order. Got it out of the box (well packaged by Amazon) and I must say that it looked good. Small & flat with beautiful clean lines. It was just the size I wanted for a tablet as it occupies just a small part of my desk. I have it permanently on the desk now. I also like that the pen has it’s own place when not using it. A good thing as I don’t want to go looking for the pen when I need to use the tablet.
So, out of the box, first thing is to test how it works. Tested it on Corel painter and it worked well. I really like the feel of the drawing area as it’s made to feel like you are actually drawing on real paper. Checked the sensitivity and it is ok with Corel.
Now to Photoshop. That did not work well. I felt it was too sensitive and did not respond well. I could not drill down into photoshop tools because the pen was too sensitive and intead of opening the buttons, it just formed a ring when you tried to click on the drill down menu. That was a problem. Tried to adjust the settings but no joy. So I finally went on to Bamboo website to see if anybody had the same issues. You see, I have Windows 7 and the intuos3 I had previously did not install well. But I wasn’t going to give up on the Bamboo. Low & behold, others had the same issue with windows 7 and a Wacom representative explained how to overcome it. I did that, and my pen is behaving perfectly. So please checkout the Bamboo forums for problems associated with your tablet. Solutions may be there.
Now for the touch aspect. I have not used much of this but the little I have it feels like using the pad on a laptop except bigger space. It’s brilliant if you are after using it in place of a mouse to open files etc. I think it’s ok for this but I don’t see why anybody should buy the Bamboo touch at the price marketed when you can have the pen & touch at just a little bit more or the Bamboo Pen at a little less.
The Pen & Touch has 1024 pressure level, same as the intous3. The Bamboo Pen only has 512 while the Bamboo touch has none. Massive difference.
The Bamboo Pen & touch works well & it’s highly recommended.
Rating: 5 / 5
I purchased this tablet for use with Photoshop. Installation was easy but I also downloaded the latest software from the Wacom site during the installation. I find the pen button rather awkward to use and I still find myself at times reverting to my 6 button mouse for several commands. As I become more familiar with the tablet I expect to use the mouse less. I think I will always use the keyboard shortcuts as they are still the best and quickest.Where this tablet excells for me is for masking–selecting areas is so much easier than with a mouse. There are also a few amusing programes you can download. As with Photoshop the learning curve is there but by playing around with a combination of pen and keyboard I am certain that this device is a worthwhile addition to anyone who uses Photoshop. I cant comment on using this tablet with other image manipulation software as I have not tried them but I guess the results the tablet offers will be similar. Overall a very clever piece of kit that offers many enhancements to your workload–all you have to do is remember which command/procedure to use!
Rating: 4 / 5
I’ve owned a Wacom Bamboo tablet for a few years so when I saw there was a second generation tablet coming out I wondered what it would bring. In short, as well as being a very good graphics tablet with wireless and battery free pen, it becomes a giant touchpad and works like a laptop’s own touchpad along with other functions such as pinching to zoom in and out and rotating images. Unfortunately you have to be using software that supports those functions or it has no more use than a normal touchpad.
The tablet itself is very well built, feels solid and looks great for what it is. In comparison to the first generation Bamboo the design has changed but it’s essentially the same thing except the button placement has changed and it includes a small loop to holster the pen. The previous model had a small plastic base that reminds me of an ink well from years past. I prefer the holster method because it means the pen is always with the tablet even when it isn’t being used.
The old model Bamboo’s pen only had 512 levels of pressure sensitivity while the new pen has 1,024 levels. It might not mean much to a lot of people but it allows a greater range of subtle strokes in drawings. Again this relies on the software supporting such features but this is more widespread than the gestures of the tablet. The pen itself feels comfortable in the hand and has buttons to simulate left and right-click operations as well as an eraser on the top of the pen. What this means is you can flip the pen around and it functions like an eraser in programs, saving you picking the erase function in doing so but once again this relies on the program supporting it.
Overall I’m very happy with the product. This is where you notice I only gave it one star. That’s because of the frankly abysmal customer support on offer if you run into a problem they don’t have. What I’m talking about relates to an issue that I, and others, have experienced which can make the tablet hugely frustrating to use. In use there is a button you can press on the pen which functions as a pan / scroll function allowing you to drag web pages up and down or moving images around on screen. It’s a simple function and this might sound petty but it is very useful and it’s surprising how often you use it especially if you’re zoomed in tight on an image and need to pan around.
The issue in question is that the act of simply pressing this button while it’s near the tablet sends CPU use through the roof. A nominal 5 – 15% CPU increase I could understand but for myself and others with this problem it increases to near 100% CPU use until you release the button which causes a lot of issues such as laggy pointer movement. It doesn’t matter what programs are open in the background and the variety of PC specifications listed in a support forum thread far exceed what’s required ranging from Core 2 Duo to quad core systems with very good graphics cards. The issue can be ‘resolved’ by installing much earlier drivers but as this is a new product you can’t use that workaround as it will mean losing functionality. There is a seven page thread on the support forums that has been going since June 2009 without resolution and the best Wacom support have to offer is to repeatedly state “we don’t see that problem on our systems” which isn’t good enough considering the cost of the product. If you’re lucky enough to not have this issue the tablet is very good but if you do have it they seem content to ignore it since they can’t see it on their test systems and seem uninterested in helping further. Overall it’s a great product let down by a frankly insulting lack of support.
Rating: 1 / 5