Mike Wuerthele
Introduced at Thursday's Consumer Electronics Show, Wacom's Intuos Pro and Intuos Pro Paper Edition tablets are upgraded from previous models, and now equipped with the highly-sensitive Pro Pen 2. Launched at the same time, the Bamboo Folio is a compact smartpad for quickly noting down ideas while on the move.
Intuos Pro, Paper Edition
Aimed at artists and creative individuals, the Intuos Pro and Intuos Pro Paper Edition measure half an inch thick, are more compact than earlier models, and use an anodized aluminum backing for strength. Controls while using the tablet include multitouch with gestures, a TouchRing, and eight ExpressKeys to use for command shortcuts.
Along with a new pen case and a smaller pen stand with ten nibs, Wacom has included the Pro Pen 2, a stylus that offers 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity, four times that of the previous Pro Pen. The Paper Edition adds on top the ability to draw out a design on paper, while digitizing strokes at the same time. For this, the Paper edition includes a clip to keep the paper in place, and the Wacom Finetip Pen to draw with.
Shipping this month, the Intuos Pro will cost $349.95 for the medium-sized model, and $499.95 for the large. The Intuos Pro Paper Edition will cost $399.95 and $549.95 for medium and large, respectively.
Bamboo Folio
The small Bamboo Folio is similar to the larger model and the Bamboo Slate, but differs in size. The smartpad allows users to draw or make notes on a pad of half-letter-size paper, which can then be transferred to an iPhone or iPad over Bluetooth.
Up to 100 pages can be stored before needing to be synchronized with a mobile device. The accompanying Inkspace app allows the digitized images to be exported to various cloud services in a number of different formats, including JPG, PNG, and PDF. Wacom's own Inkspace service offers a free basic plan with 5GB of storage, which can hold over six thousand pages of notes, though a paid plan is also available with a capacity of 50GB.
Available now, the small Bamboo Folio is priced at $149.95. The Inkspace Plus subscription is $2.99 per month, but is offered with a three-month free trial.
Charles Martin
Christine McKee
Oliver Haslam
6 Comments
What do you mean by
"grows macOS tablets"
???
I was wondering if Wacom was going to abandon the Intuos line in favor of their display-based products. Im pretty happy with my Intous 5, but if they keep updating the line, eventually I'll break down and upgrade.
One thing I'd love them to bring back: the little e-ink displays on the buttons from the Intuos 4 line. I know I'm not looking down while drawing in the tablet, but I just find myself not liking the HUD that displays the function of each button when you touch it. The Buttons are too sensitive and I find myself avoiding them so I don't pop up the HUD constantly.
Sadly, it seems that I am in the minority and the touch method is what Wacom will stick with.
I have been using wacom devices for years - and I never, ever get the fidelity that you see in their promotional images. Even these images here show tell tale signs of just a ink drawing being photoshopped onto a digital display - perfectly matched ink globs, marker splits and flawless opacity reproduction.
The Intuos tablets were always the premium (the Bamboo models are rebrands of the earlier Graphire series.) That said, the Cintiq is de-facto requirements for animation. Everyone else who has access to a tablet PC (or even a phone) can buy a pen and get about 50% of what they need (especially with the Apple Pencil for the iPad Pro) but it doesn't replace the software or necessary tilt/pressure requirements for professional use.
Ask anyone who works a comic/art/animation convention and they will tell you that the Surface Pro 2 was pretty much what they wanted (which had the Wacom tech,) then Microsoft botched it with replacing it with nTrig, and now nobody will recommend the Surface Pro 3 or later except to people who aren't sure if they want to use a tablet computer at all.
The primary issue with drawing, is that the software (eg Photoshop) is very CPU/GPU demanding in bursts, which tablet PC's are extremely bad at, so you can't spend 8 hours a day using the Surface Pro, because it will literately start melting by hour 2. This is the cost of "thinner lighter" and we need to walk this back before the computers become utterly not useful like the "netbook" generation.
So Intuos series are pretty much "just a graphics digitizer" and the biggest selling point was the tilt and pressure sensitivity levels (the graphire only had 9 bits of precision where as the Intuos has 11 bits) The nTrig tech never has more than 8 bits of pressure and has no tilt. It's not terribly meaningful for vector graphics, but is absolutely required to have the maximum precision for digital paint/photo restoration.