Wacom Intuos5 Tablet Review

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Hang around with folks using Pho­to­shop and you’re bound to hear some dis­cus­sion about using a Wacom tablet. Not just the generic sub­ject of using a graphic tablet, but specif­i­cally a Wacom tablet. Quite frankly, peo­ple rave about these devices. They’ll tell you that it offers much more con­trol than a mouse. Hold­ing a pen feels more nat­ural than hold­ing a mouse. A mouse can’t vary the pres­sure of a brush, but you can do it with a pen & tablet. You know what? They’re right. It’s all true.

More impor­tantly, the results show in their images. Per­haps I should rephrase that a bit. The slop­pi­ness of a mouse is more likely to show in an image, because peo­ple using a brush can get into fine details that mouse users will never under­stand. A Wacom pen & tablet offers pre­cise con­trol that’s on another plane above using a mouse.

Get­ting used to work­ing with the Wacom Intuos tablet took a few days for me to adjust from using a mouse. It wasn’t that the pen didn’t feel com­fort­able; it did. The thing I needed to over­come was the hand-​eye coör­di­na­tion of look­ing at the screen while plac­ing my pen on another sur­face. It was frus­trat­ing at first, but it’s eas­ily over­come with a few days use.

Adapt­ing to the Intuos5

The Intuos5 has some notable changes from the pre­vi­ous ver­sion. Multi-​touch ges­tures are the head­line attrac­tion, and it may change the way you inter­act with your com­puter all the time, not just in Pho­to­shop or sim­i­lar appli­ca­tions. Although there were some folks who used the pen & tablet at all times, I sus­pect most peo­ple switched off to using a mouse for most of their needs, or a track­pad. I was insane enough to use an Intuos4 Medium tablet, an Apple Magic Mouse, and an Apple Magic Track­pad. I often had one hand on the key­board and another float­ing around these three input devices. Let’s just say that it got cum­ber­some to have so many things on my desktop.

Wacom ExpressKey HUD

All of that changed when I bought my Intuos5 tablet. It com­bined the ser­vices of all of those devices into one unit. The pen still serves in cre­ative appli­ca­tions as it always did before. In fact, it seems even more com­fort­able with a matte sur­face, much eas­ier to grip. One thing I miss is hav­ing the Express Keys illu­mi­nated on the pad. Now there is a heads-​up dis­play on your pri­mary screen when your fin­ger hov­ers over one of the Express Keys. That’s good for the folks who pre­fer the Small tablet size, as they never had the illu­mi­nated dis­play. How­ever, it’s another item that takes some adjust­ment to get used to look­ing some­place other than where you’re touch­ing the keys.

The multi-​touch ges­tures have com­pletely elim­i­nated my need for a mouse or track­pad. I can eas­ily move my cur­sor around with one fin­ger. Two fin­gers allow you to scroll pages, though the tablet is finicky about align­ment. If your fin­gers aren’t mov­ing up/​down, then the track­pad may either try to zoom in or out, or rotate when you want to scroll. Using two fin­gers to pinch or Three fin­gers swipes will move pages back­ward or for­ward, such as web pages or Launch­pad pages on a Mac. Four fin­gers move through desk­tops on my Mac OS machine. Some­times it gets a bit con­fus­ing for me and I’ll use the wrong ges­ture. Those mis­takes are fewer as I become more accli­mated with the Intuos5.

Wacom Radial HUD

Using the Intuos5 mul­ti­touch ges­tures for cre­at­ing selec­tions or per­form­ing drag & drop oper­a­tions is dif­fer­ent than using a track­pad on your com­puter. There is no but­ton on the bot­tom to act as a Click, though you can pro­gram an Express key for that pur­pose. Wacom pro­vides a Ges­ture Guide that says drag & drop is a sim­ple two-​step operation:

1. Tap to select.
2. Tap again and slide your fin­ger to drag.

The first step works fine, but the sec­ond step to drag has never worked for me. I ended up pro­gram­ming an ExpressKey for Click. Hold­ing down that Click key and drag­ging with my fin­ger works, but then both of my hands are tied up in some­thing that used to be a single-​hand action with a mouse. For­tu­nately, text selec­tion and drag & drop oper­a­tions are sim­ple, one-​hand affairs when using the pen. There are many things I like about using ges­tures on the Intuos5 tablet, but I’m still switch­ing to a pen when I need to select and manip­u­late an object.

Only the pen uses pres­sure sen­si­tiv­ity, not fin­ger ges­tures. How­ever, that’s no dif­fer­ent than using a track­pad or mouse, so it isn’t a set­back from other input methods.

Small, Medium or Large?

The Intuos5 tablet comes in three sizes — Small, Medium and Large. The pre­vi­ous ver­sion also had an Extra Large size that will remain avail­able, but it won’t have the multi-​touch fea­tures. My pre­vi­ous tablet was an Intuos4 Medium, but I decided to try the Small tablet when upgrad­ing to the Intuos5. This deci­sion varies depend­ing upon how you like to work. I based my deci­sion to use the Small size on two factors:

1. It’s eas­ier to pack for travel.
2. I don’t have to move my hand very far while using the pen.

When you use the Small tablet, most of your moves only require bend­ing at the wrist to reach dif­fer­ent parts of the screen. When using the Medium size, I had to bend at the elbow to move the pen around. Using the Large size required even more move­ment. Basi­cally, I’m lazy and like small move­ments. When dis­cussing this issue with other users, they pre­fer the Large tablet, par­tic­u­larly when using a large mon­i­tor. They felt too con­strained by mak­ing small moves over such a large part of the screen. All of the tablets have the same capa­bil­i­ties, so the size really depends upon the kind of reach that is most com­fort­able for the user. Some users buy a Small tablet for travel, but pre­fer using a Medium or Large at home so they can spread out a bit more. It’s an mat­ter of indi­vid­ual preference.

Con­clu­sion

All in all, I felt it was a wor­thy suc­ces­sor and upgrade to the Intuos4 tablet. I’ve elim­i­nated my mouse & track­pad and only use the Intuos5 and key­board for input now. That forces me to use it more than I had in the past. I’m find­ing it’s a bet­ter input tool. My hands no longer cramp up from extended mou­s­ing around. Most of the multi ges­ture con­trols are easy and com­fort­able. It takes a bit of time and prac­tice to adjust, but the results are worth it.