I had used Intuos in the past, but never had such a slick tablet with so many great features. It is very thin and cool looking; sleek, black, and large. It is definitely eye catching.

The pad comes with a wireless mouse that can be substituted so that the user doesn't have to have more than one mouse on the desktop. However, the mouse has an odd felt bottom and seems to move rather slowly. I'm used to a nice wireless Logitech moving fast, but the one mouse use negates the slowness somewhat.

The pen had a rubberized grip that is very easy to handle and makes using it comfortable on the hand. The pad comes with a screw top storage unit that houses about 10 different tips for the pen. This is a plus for those who are prone to misplacing equipment that isn’t attached.

The pen is very sensitive to pressure allowing for great differences in line width, flow, and size. The drawing surface has a very nice feel. As an artist, I really enjoyed the texture of it. One feature I do miss from my last 'tiny' tablet in the 2000s was the clear plastic screen that I could put sketches under and draw from there, but honestly this is so much better in every other way. I really love just having the pen in my hand. It makes it a joy to work with.

As a web designer and video editor I primarily use Adobe products, but after working with the Intuos a bit I was able to really make the tablet pay off on an AfterEffects project. The client wanted to show job conditions in the United States and the employee shrinkage that we have experienced in recent years, but at the same time highlight that they had a market in the Chicago area that seemed much more hopeful. The client originally wanted to show "millions" of people on a map of the US walking back and forth bumping into each other. My liaison noted that we didn’t actually need "millions", but we needed something that would fill up the United States that looked cool. He suggested stick figures.

I had a vector library of a group of business type people silhouettes that I imported into Bridge. Using the tablet I was able to very easily pull groups of people into Illustrator and change their fills and strokes, zoom in and arrange paths in a different manner and finish arranging the 50 or so characters to be ready to get imported into AfterEffects.

I tried using the Wacom mouse to do some of the 3D work but found it cumbersome. I was able to switch to my regular mouse without any problems. I was easily able to use the pen to drag the multitude of characters around their 3D world, arrange them to the spots and zones in the United States that I thought mixed them up best, use the Touch Ring feature to zoom in and out quickly and then render out test animation after test animation with little effort.

I was also able to utilize the tablet in quickly getting scale and the necessary opacity setting to animate as the working class silhouettes faded from the 3D scene of the United States. Then with a camera push in, the video zooms in on Illinois and the client dropped in the green screen footage they had filmed and keyed into the scene. We easily made the deadline and the end user was thrilled.

The programmable short cuts on the left side of the tablet were a huge time saver, and made the project a lot more fun than the tedium that it could have been. An added feature is the fact the tablet is reversible if I had been more comfortable with the shortcut keys and wheel on the right side instead.

One minor annoyance that I have had with the pad is that on my dual monitor laptop there is a tiny Intuos menu in the very top right, or left (depending on the monitor) that jumps back and forth when moused over. It tends to cover up the close button when a window is maximized. Not a huge deal and could be a setting on my end as it doesn't happen on my main tower, but an annoyance just the same.

In short, I am a big fan of this tablet and am thrilled to have this in my arsenal of tools. I've had a good time using it, and am looking forward to future projects where its use is applicable.

Reviewer: John Collins