Wacom's Bamboo Pen & Touch unboxed and previewed

Wacom sure has been busy with its Bamboo line, and now the impressions are starting to trickle in. The Pen & Touch is particularly interesting, marrying what is essentially an extra large touchpad with traditional digital pen tech -- and to what effect? Well, the tester at BestTabletReview.com didn't find much difference in accuracy or sensitivity with his old Graphire, and was particularly digging the 16:9 ratio over his old tablet's 4:3 setup -- making for more of a 1-to-1 penning experience. Of course, it's probably more up to personal tastes as to whether you'll really find the multitouch aspects of the unit worthwhile, but they aren't touched on much here, and you could always just spring for the Pen-only edition if that's the way you're wired.

[MikeZ Posted Sep 26th 2009 10:57AM]

In the age of widescreen displays it should be a good idea to offer both form factors.

[Old fogie late bloomer Posted Sep 26th 2009 11:27AM]

Technically the pen-sensitive area of both the small and large tablets are right around a 16:10 aspect ratio, rather than 16:9, according to the specs listed on Wacom's site. You can always set the software to ignore the bottom tenth of the active area; at least, you could on the last Bamboo series.

[Michael Leung Posted Sep 26th 2009 11:36AM]

Still have my old Graphire. Love it, but I'm wondering if it's time to go more professional (read: LARGER).

[Wwhat Posted Sep 26th 2009 12:10PM]

Nice to see you can turn the touch off, else drawing would require you to keep your hand afloat above the tablet at all times, which isn't always so great when drawing.
And although it's not listed on this review I see on the wacom site that the tech specs are pretty decent and not cutting corners:
Pressure Levels 1024
Resolution 2540 lpi

So yeah, I want one, only caveat being that you don't have the angle sensitivity for the pen like an intuos has, but that doesn't have the touch, so you'd have to choose if you want to use it artistically or get both or wait for an intuos update possibly.
Oh and it doesn't have the ring, now you might argue you don't need the ring since the whole surface is touch, but there's something about a ring that is nice, sort of seems logical for settings to have a round thing like that, but it's something you can live without though and not even remotely a dealbreaker..

[Bosco Posted Sep 26th 2009 12:10PM]

Pen & Touch: not Bullshit

[crescentdavid Posted Sep 26th 2009 12:22PM]

This information has been on the Wacom site for awhile. Visit it and you can see videos of the tablet as well as the different gestures-how they work and what they do. They're pretty rudimentary, but I think part of Wacom's strategy is to market this as your next mouse/trackpad, with the additional advantages of pen input for writing and drawing. At $99 (!) it never was designed for the "professional."

[CarpeD1em500 Posted Sep 26th 2009 12:35PM]

Speaking of "if thats the way you're wired"


...why is this wired?

[BOGRASH Posted Sep 26th 2009 12:41PM]

wireless = flakey as all hell

[crescentdavid Posted Sep 26th 2009 1:07PM]

Because it was trying to meet a certain price point.

[Levi Posted Sep 26th 2009 1:31PM]

"wireless = flakey as hell" = ignorant as poop.

[ScaryFast Posted Sep 26th 2009 1:15PM]

I bought one yesterday, and it doesn't work properly in Photoshop CS4 on my Windows 7 laptop. 50 percent or more of the time when I try to draw a line it sort of pauses for a split second and draws a perfectly straight section of line rather than the curve or circle I drew. Basically, circles are drawn with 1 flat spot, sort of like a D

It doesn't do the same thing in Paint or any other app I've tried though, and the regular Wacom Bamboo I bought last week works fine on the same computer in Photoshop.

I made sure to go to the Wacom site for new Windows 7 drivers, but it didn't help.

[ScaryFast Posted Sep 26th 2009 1:18PM]

Also, when I was playing around trying to figure out that problem I would draw simple round heads and eyes and when it got down to drawing pupils I would touch the pen to the surface to make small strokes and the "press and hold to bring up a menu" circle would appear it it would pause and not draw what I drew, often resulting in that menu popping up.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 26th 2009 1:26PM]

ScaryFast, did you turn off the touch functionality before trying to draw with the pen? I tried my tablet with Windows 7 (but only Photoshop CS2) and Leopard OS X (with Photoshop CS4) and couldn't reproduce the issue. It could be only with Windows 7 and CS4 though. I have noticed the tablet sometimes does weird things when you're using the pen, but still have the touch pad turned on.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 26th 2009 5:58PM]

I just returned mine to Best Buy. The Touch capabilities were terrible. I'm now just patiently waiting for something as good as the macbook pro trackpads, but will probably die first. I doubt Apple will ever make one... :(

[sintricate Posted Sep 26th 2009 1:17PM]

Engadget must love this thing for it to have 3 or possibly 4 entries.

[Levi Posted Sep 26th 2009 1:33PM]

I have the larger Bamboo Fun that retailed at Best Buy almost a year ago for $200. I've found that I'd actually rather have a smaller tablet, unlike before I got the unit, thinking the smaller ones would just not be enough.

So I've been thinking about offloading my larger Bamboo for this smaller Bamboo Pen & Touch. What do you guys think? Also, do we know if any of the gestures work in Windows yet?? Or just MacOS?

[BigD145 Posted Sep 26th 2009 2:55PM]

A lot of artists use smaller tablets. Most of them work on tiny areas of big pieces.

[hawkwood Posted Sep 26th 2009 2:14PM]

And I just finished making my own USB touchpad... oh well.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 26th 2009 2:47PM]

YouTube'er SoldierKnowsBest has posted a video review about this recently. Looks pretty nice in action.

Edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2teDR5zRKrg

[slamEVIL Posted Sep 26th 2009 6:44PM]

Bandwidth Limit Exceeded
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later.

i think we killed them.

[simbr Posted Sep 26th 2009 8:13PM]

I've been eyeing up the Bamboo Fun for years since it comes with Photoshop Elements and I'm still stuck with version 2. If I had the money I'd be sold.

[GrokSurf Posted Sep 26th 2009 10:58PM]

Good luck with your Wacoms. I have a Wacom ArtZII tablet I paid major bucks for in 1995. Worked just fine, but it's in the garage as a memento. Can't use it anymore. Won't work with XP or Vista. When I asked when they'll provide drivers for it, they said they have no intention of supporting that model anymore.

[gsaj Posted Sep 27th 2009 4:41AM]

Are you intimating that Wacom isn't doing a good job supporting hardware from 15 years ago? Okay. Interfaces have changed considerably in that time. USB was revolutionary for peripherals.

I have virtually NO hardware from that era that is still supported, except maybe a PC keyboard. Complaints about a 1995 tablet are pretty absurd, IMO.

[Wwhat Posted Sep 27th 2009 12:36PM]

The following driver downloads are available for your UD Series/ArtPad(KT)/ArtZ(UD) running under Windows XP:
Description
Driver 4.78-6 for Windows

[AlaskanHandyman Posted Sep 26th 2009 11:04PM]

Leave it to Engadget to help a server exceed its bandwidth limit... I would love to read the article but I will have to wait...

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 27th 2009 12:48AM]

Apologies for the downtime everyone. Best Tablet Review has increased its bandwidth to fit the increased load and the site should be active. We had a lot of productive days lately and with Engadget's posting of our review (our sincere thanks) it was enough to trip the load.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 27th 2009 2:21AM]

ooooh gimme gimme

[ex242 Posted Sep 27th 2009 10:20PM]

I purchased one from Staples. I use a MBP and a 24" screen in duality. This unit was not able to smoothly interpolate between the two. When using, the unit would bounce around my input making false opens, closes, deletes, moves, etc. This with both pen and touch. I talked to WACOM and they suggested the Intuos 4 size Medium. It costs three times as much. I bought it, and it made a world of difference. It works beautifully and is highly accurate.

When I turned off one of the screens, the accuracy of the Bamboo Touch went up, but still nothing compared to the Intuos. That's the difference of 2400 DPI vs. 5K DPI.

As far as the touch goes, I found that I didn't use it much at all. It isn't as useful as the MBP pad, and I ultimately found it inconvenient. I would recommend a high DPI tablet for anyone using a MBP. For other machines, the Bamboo Touch may be just convenient and fun enough to use.

[thedankone Posted Oct 2nd 2009 5:41PM]

Sounds like a Mac problem. I have two screens one 22" 1680x1050 and an HP lp2475w 24" 1920x1080. Works great with mirrored display setting or extended display setting. You can also tell the Wacom software to only use one screen, this helps when drawing.

I think you had to get use to the hover pen setting. This lets you hold the pen about 1/4 inch or less above the tablet and still control the movement of the cursor. If you don't understand that setting then you could have the stated effect. This setting comes in handy for drawing so you can lift the pen off the tablet but still see the cursors placement.

This is a great product. Great packaging and usability. Some tweaking of settings are needed in Windows 7, as the OS has its own settings that interfere with Wacom settings. While it doesn't have the pressure levels of an Intros...you can still adjust line strength in Illustrator or Photoshop. Overall 9 out of 10.

[ScaryFast Posted Sep 28th 2009 2:24AM]

I brought my Bamboo Pen & Touch home and finally decided to try it out on my regular PC (because of the Win7 + Photoshop CS4 issues with my laptop)

I can't install it...

Every time it tells me to plug in the device it automatically moves on and tells me I must reboot. I've rebooted twice, got sick of it an downloaded software from the website, and it wants me to keep rebooting...nice.

[thedankone Posted Oct 2nd 2009 5:41PM]

Hey ScaryFast,

I don't know what problems you speak of w/ CS4 + Windows 7. I have CS4 Master Collection installed on Win 7 RC (build 7600) x64 and really only have issues w/ Encore. Photoshop works flawlessly here.

I also have a Bamboo Pen & Touch. I had no problems here installing it or getting it to work. Only issue I had is overlapping settings w/ Win 7 and Wacom. I had to turn off the Windows "hold down for sub-menu" setting so I could draw properly.

What do you mean by "regular pc"? XP or Vista...

[thedankone Posted Oct 2nd 2009 7:17PM]

Hey,

Just read your earlier post here. Sounds like your having the same problem I did. When you leave the pen on the surface to draw it opens the brush menu in Photoshop.

Follow these steps to fix:

Go in to the Control Panel...Open Hardware/Sound...Open Pen/Touch...Under Pen Options Tab...3rd option down is "Press and Hold" Double Click...At the Top Un-check "Enable press for right-click".

You should now be able to draw without problems. If you need to open a sub-menu just use the button on the side of the pen.

[PersTechLife Posted Oct 7th 2009 7:27AM]

I really like the Bamboo Tablet. It currently helps to re-integrate my left hand into the computer operation (Mouse right hand) tablet left hand.

The only problem I currently have is that the "Back" gesture doesn't work within Firefox.

PTL

Some more thoughts here: http://blog.perstechlife.com/2009/10/06/bamboo-touch-first-impressions

[simbr Posted Oct 9th 2009 6:21AM]

I picked up the Bamboo Fun yesterday. Darned if I can get it working in WinXP.
Initially I got basic touchpad functionality - I could move the pointer around with a finger but not click on anything, and the oen didn't do anything at all. The installer had failed to install the actual Bamboo software so I installed it manually.. and now it does nothing at all, the tutorial still says the driver isn't loaded and I can't open the config utility.
Ho hum.

[PersTechLife Posted Oct 16th 2009 3:16AM]

Wacom confirmed that the "Back" function on Bamboo Touch Tablet is not working with intern. keyb. setting in Firefox

http://bit.ly/hH52Z

PersTechLife