After a couple of weeks of playing with the new toy, I finally feel qualified to say a little about it, doubtless as far as cohesive reviews go it will never win any awards, but I can say what I think of it as an art tool, and I won’t blind with science as, frankly, I couldn’t if I tried.
The only thoughts that entered my mind when thinking about a new tablet were “can I afford it?” not “which should I get”, because there really is no contest as far as I’m concerned when it comes to a graphics tablet. My last wacom (a straightforward Intuos) had been faithfully performing for me since 1999, and still would be if the Intuos 3 hadn’t caught my eye and pulled me in with it’s promise of shiny new delights. The Intous still works, has never let me down and has never needed repairing. The reason for abandoning it was purely an “I want” factor. What can I say? I like shiny things… got my eye on a new monitor now as well..
Firstly, what do you get? In terms of value for money the Intous 3 has more goodies packed with it than previous iterations. Previously, the only extras that came with a new tablet were a copy of Painter Classic and one spare nib (discounting the mouse), which while handy wasn’t a staggering array of extras. Nibs galore now seems to be the order of the day with one standard nib in the pen, three spare standard nibs, a felt pen nib and a ‘stroke’ nib. The first thing I did was pull out my pliers and replace the standard nib with the felt pen nib, a sexy little black number with allegedly more friction and a more natural drawing feel. They do not lie. The felt pen nib has stayed put, I’m utterly enamoured of it and I wish they had actually put three of those in as spares instead of the standards, but you can’t have it all I guess.
The tablet itself no longer has the transparent overlay, so can’t be used to trace sketches. I see this as no great loss as I never used it anyway, and the replacement is sturdier yet more responsive to pressure. The felt tip pen does indeed have more friction on it, and there is a nice satisfying scratchy noise when you apply pressure. I must just say at this point that the pen has become somewhat chunkier in itself, but I believe this is common with the Intuos 2, which I’ve never used. It also has a grip sleeve.
The ‘new’ features; the touch strip and the shortcut buttons while handy, don’t add a great deal to the setup. I’ve already disabled the right hand touchstrip as I kept hitting it with my hand while sketching, and I’ve reprogrammed the shortcut keys to the ones I use most often on the keyboard. Force of habit means that I still tend to draw with my left hand resting on ctrl + z, but I can see how it might be handy for some. According to the website, the Intuos 3 has double the amount of pressure levels as the Intuos 2, and quadruple that of the original Intuos. I’d be lying if I said I noticed a huge amount of difference, but I tend to sketch very quickly and lightly so I may be missing out on some of the more subtle aspects of that.
The mouse has yet to impress me, though I can say the same about the previous one. I much prefer not to have to keep the mouse on the tablet, and find the side switches infuriating. I haven’t looked into disabling, although I’m sure you probably can, but I’ve never used the mouse before and don’t really expect to start now. Performance on the tablet seems adequate enough, it’s just that I don’t use it.
One more big plus point, it seems that cursor wobble due to proximity of the tablet to the monitor has been completely eradicated. My old wacom never was happy to be too close, and when I moved the pen to the top of the tablet, I did experience wobbling, that’s the same for me at work as well with an Intuos A4, so it’s not a fault that could be repaired, if it’s even classified as a fault at all.
Lastly, the software. The drivers and manual are easy to navigate, the manual set up areas easy to understand. Reprogramming hotkeys is particularly easy, if I can do it anyone can. The tablet comes packaged with Painter Essentials 2, which I installed then promptly uninstalled less than five minutes later. It’s extremely stripped down, although a big plus point is that it does support layers. Though this seems somewhat pointless as files cannot be saved in PSD format, so there’s little you can do to save the layer data into Photoshop. For most people with no access to high end programmes, I dare say it would do just fine. But right now, I still rate the freeware version of Open Canvas above Essentials or Alias Sketchbook Pro, particularly given the price difference between OC and ASP (OC= nothing, ASP = $150+).
What do I think? I love it, I’ve always sworn by my Wacom, and I haven’t changed my opinion one bit.
Worth every damn penny of yer 200 Great British Pounds, or whatever currency you use…
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