Wacom Intuos4 Wireless Pen Tablet
Review by Ray E. : Intuos4 Medium vs. Bamboo Fun

After writing this I was afraid of TLDR issues. Here is the short and sweet - if you are going to get a Wacom tablet, and you know you are going to use it, save your lunch money and get the Intuos4. End of story - if you get a Bamboo and later try an Intuos4 you'll kick yourself, I guarantee it. Higher accuracy, higher resolution, higher sensitivity, tilt recognition, higher data rate (more responsive), better construction, better warranty. If you want to know how I came to this conclusion, read on.

Please keep in mind: I have worked in the IT industry for over 13 years. However overall I am not a pro user of these products. I have about two weeks of use on each. I used the tablets on a Mac Pro with photoshop, corel, and sketchbook pro 2011.

I spent close to two weeks trying to decide on a Wacom tablet for Christmas - Bamboo Fun vs Intuos4 Medium. I kept reading about the pros of each. I could not find a comparison review, nor a single product review that pushed me solidly one direction or the other. Should I spend the extra money on the professional level product?

In the end, I started with the Bamboo because:
I didn't want to waste money. The Intuos4 medium was another $150 - almost twice the cost of the Bamboo. I am not a professional and people said the Bamboo had the same levels of sensitivity as the previous professional model (Intuos3). I wasn't 100% sure the kids would keep using it or get full value from it. If I didn't think it was for me, I could always trade up and try the Intuos4.

Initially we were very happy playing around with the Bamboo. There is nothing blatantly wrong with it at all. It has deservedly positive reviews. People make wonderful works of digital art with it. After playing for about 10 days, and watching youtube vids of people using Wacom tablets, I ran across a comment against the Bamboo that finally broke me. Someone pointed out that the USB cable was attached to the tablet, and cannot be replaced if it breaks. Toss it straight into the trash. Hmmm - bad news. If you look closely at the construction, you can also tell it would be very easy for the cable to wear out. I cannot believe I hadn't noticed that flaw myself. We have two lefties and two righties in the house and we are constantly rotating the tablet. I don't want to be replacing a 200 dollar tablet over a 10 dollar cable. I boxed her up that day and returned it for the Intuos4 Medium.

Let me tell you what people, the Intuos4 is worth more than the extra $150. Any day of the week. Even removing it from the box was a pleasure.

USB Interface:
Bamboo - Cable is attached, thin shielding, and not replaceable.
Intuos4 - Cable is removable, very well made, thick and several feet longer than it needs to be (2.5 m). TWO USB inputs on the tablet, so the cable can always be situated at the top. Also provides a spare port in case one breaks! As an IT guy, this alone was worth an upgrade. Well played, Wacom.

Buttons:
Bamboo has 4 buttons. One button is used to turn the touch functions on and off. Touch Pad functions can be used to pinch zoom, rotate, scroll, etc if the app supports touch.
Intuos4 has 8 buttons with LEDs plus a touch ring wheel. The touch ring can be assigned 4 functions for all applications. Fully programmable. The kicker - the touch ring can be used for all the touch pad functions that the Bamboo did, and does them better. Rotate, Zoom, Scroll, Undo, change your pen size - you name it. Spin the ring with your off hand while drawing. Another upgrade that was easily worth the 150 bucks alone.

Pens:
Bamboo accuracy .02 inch. A very light, plastic toy feeling pen. There were a couple extra nibs in a plastic bag.
Intuos4 accuracy .01 inch. Pen is noticeably heavier. It reminded me of picking up a very well made tool after using some crap made in China and getting that sudden realization that you've been doing it wrong all this time. The pen recognizes tilt - the angle you hold the pen at. The cool "ink well" stand is classy and holds 10 extra nibs and the nib replacement tool. You suddenly start signing your name with a flourish. It just feels right! The Intuos4 also includes a wireless mouse that can be used on the pad if you are not using the pen.

Pressure levels:
Bamboo 1024
Intuos4 2048
People said you can't tell the difference, but let me tell you I could, and so did my wife. It may not be the ONE thing you need to upgrade for, but it's one more reason to spend the extra cash, for sure.

Resolution:
Bamboo 2540 lines per inch
Intuos4 5080 lines per inch

Software packages:
Are basically the same, Intuos4 software package must be downloaded though - Bamboo has physical media.

Tablet itself:
Basically same review as the Pens, the Intuos4 is heavier and feels much sturdier and like a professional tool.

Warranty:
Bamboo - 1 year
Intuos4 - 2 years USA and Canada

Wacom Intuos4 Wireless Pen Tablet
Review by Richard Bering : 3 steps forward, 2 steps backward

As my review title suggests, Wacom has improved once again with it's new tablet, yet has taken a couple steps backward also which keeps me from giving it 5 stars.
CONS:
1. If you're a 3d Artist, you might use the Ctrl/Alt/Shift buttons much more than regular graphic artists.. Intuos4 lined up these buttons making it harder to select more than one at a time, and the buttons themselves are harder to press and now feel "cheap". Intuos3 buttons were perfect, the changes are purely for looks and the functionality suffered because of it.
2. Zoom is circular now? whatever. Again, looks cool, less functional.

PROS:
1. Beautiful looking! A bit thinner & wider which is great for us dual-monitor users. I could even see a market for a "9x18" size.
2. Wacom FINALLY got the surface improved. No more "painting on glass" surface.. it now has a bit of 'roughness' to it, like you're drawing on paper. HUGE improvement!!!
3. Small improvement to the grip on the pen. Same pen, but the rubber grip slips less (so far).

note: Wacom mouse now works like a regular wireless mouse, it's axis/input is determined by the mouse location/direction... not by the tablets. It's the first Wacom mouse I've considered using!!

Wacom Intuos4 Wireless Pen Tablet
Review by S. Hao "Wacom User" : Great deal for the price.

First of all, I must say that the only tablet I have used before is the Wacom Intuos3, so I will be drawing my comparisons mainly between the Intuos3 and Intuos4. I understand that there are a multitude of tablets/digitizers in the market, such as Genie and *forgot the company's name*, but my review will mainly focus on Wacom's line of tablets. To start off, I must say that if you are considering a tablet, then you might want to first try the Wacom Bamboo/Bamboo Fun before shelling out hundreds for a Intuos.

Everything aside, I love my Intuos4, and I think it is definitely a worthy upgrade from Intuos3 (or any other tablets in general), especially if you spend hours everyday with a pen.

Intuos4, instead of the gray metallic look of the Intuos3, hosts a cool black matte finish with a high-gloss black side panel. It is a lot thinner than the intuos3, a much lower profile, and a 16:9 aspect ratio.

Since most of us have widescreen monitors, I think it is very thoughtful of Wacom to update the aspect ratio of the Intuos4, but be warned though; if you use a 4:3 monitor, you might experience problems with drawing ratios since the 16:9 active area will be 'squeezed' to fit into a 4:3 layout; what this means is that if you draw a tilted line on the tablet, the line will appear to be squeezed horizontally and stretched vertically on the 4:3 monitor. Of course, you can manually limit the active area in the Wacom configuration software, but that would force you to sacrifice a portion of working area, so take this into consideration when purchasing this tablet.

The biggest design change from the Intuos3 is the layout of the expresskeys. Because of the ambidextrous design, Wacom placed all the keys on one side of the tablet, so there are more keys available to the users. What I think is extremely thoughtful of Wacom is that for the Small tablet, it came with 2 USB tables, one tilted upwards and the other downwards, as to cater to both the left-handed and the right-handed configuration. Note, however, that the Small version of the Intuos4 does not have the OLED display to the right of the expresskeys, and instead of 8, you will only get 6 keys (but it is more than sufficient for me).

The problem I have with the expresskeys is that in the Intuos3, the keys are shaped differently, so that it is very easy to locate a specific key without having to constantly look down; however, for intuos4, since all the keys are shaped exactly the same, it is extremely easy activate the wrong key...this is especially the case with Intuos4 Small, since there is no visual indication as to what function each key is assigned to, making navigation difficult. I think Wacom should have made each of the keys more distinct tactilely[sic?], especially for the Small version. However, I think this should not be much of a problem after some time of getting use to (I only had it for a day).

The Touch Ring is what I think the biggest innovation in the Intuos4. The touchstrip was great, but you can only assign one function to the strip, but with the new touch ring, you can assign 4 different functions, switchable with the press of the central bottom. What this means is that you can assign Zoom/Rotate/Brush Size/Opacity/Flow/etc. all to a single touchring, which greatly boosts productivity, and makes the tablet more intuitive to use. This is especially true with the new 'Rotate' feature in Photoshop CS4, but I have noticed that there is a significant latency delay (lag) when invoking the rotate function with the touchring, but it may just be me.

The new rubberized grip pen also features the cool black finish akin to that of the tablet; the weight of the pen is almost perfect, and the rubber grip makes using the grip pen more comfortable than ever before, but the rubber grip also attracts dust and lint, so it may be subjected to constant cleaning. The pen supports 2048 levels of sensitivity, and since I have a light stroke, the penstrokes register a lot better with Intuos4. The rocker on the pen, however, has a very poor travel, and a bit awkward to use. But all in all, I prefer the Intuos4 grip pen over the Intuos3 version for its comfort and usability.

The new improved tablet surface is perhaps as close as you can get with real Pen-on-Paper experience with a digital tablet. Intuos3's surface is extremely 'slippery', and drawing on it feels like plastic-on-plastic; however, the Intuos4's surface makes me really feel like drawing on paper with almost perfect travel and traction. The different nibs offer different levels of friction, simulating different mediums. This concept was attempted in Intuos3, but I think Intuos4 has really perfected the formula, making drawing on the tablet feel almost the same as drawing on paper.

I don't usually talk about the pen-stand, but the pen stand for Intuos4 is definitely worthy mentioning. A high gloss black finish, the pen stand can be twisted open, revealing a nib storage compartment with slots to store 10 extra nibs (and a nib extractor). I used to lose track of my pen nibs all the time, but not anymore, so kudos to Wacom for their attention to details.

The tablet comes with a wide array of softwares (Photoshop Elements, Sketchpad, etc.) all available online to Intuos4 customers via Wacom's website (but you'll have to register your Intuos4 to receive the softwares); the driver installation is extremely easy (but I do recommend resetting your wacom profile in the Wacom Preference Utility and uninstall any old wacom driver(s) before installing the new one to prevent conflicts); it took me literally 15 minutes to set everything up and running under Vista, and no problems thus far.

The expresskey configuration, however, is a bit tedious, especially if you plan on using different presets for you applications. There are many great additions, such as the Radial Menu, which is, in short, a nice multi-command invoker; this, along with the additional expresskeys and the touch ring, would probably take some time to configure to your liking.

There has been complaints about Intuos3's poor Vista support (although I have had no problems with my Intuos3 under vista); according to other reviews, Wacom seems to have fixed most of the incompatibility problems with Intuos4.

Note that I have intentionally left out the Wacom mouse because I never was a fan of Wacom's mouses, so it is still sitting in my box...maybe I'll take it out and test it someday...

PROS
+ Cool black finish, matte frame extremely comfortable to rest hand on.
+ Ambidextrous design
+ More expresskeys
+ Touchring with 4 presets
+ 2048 Levels of sensitivity
+ 16:9 Aspect ratio (may not be a pro if you have a 4:3 design, see above)
+ Great drawing surface, feels like pen-on-paper.
+ Thinner, lighter than Intuos3
+ Great driver, vista support.
+ Improved customization software, many useful functions
+ Improved grip pen, comfortable to use
+ 10 replacement nibs (should last 2-5 years)
+ Innovating pen holder, serves as a storage for replacement nibs
+ Color rings to give the grip pen a different feel
+ Tons of extra softwares, great value.


CONS
- Expresskeys shaped the same, easy to press the wrong key
- Intuos4 Small does not have the OLED display
- Price
- Only 16:9 is offered
- The rocker on the grip pen has poor travel
- May not be the best choice if you prefer the smooth drawing surface of Intuos3
- A bit too big for a small tablet (compared to Intuos3 Small)
- High gloss side panel is a fingerprint magnet
- The rubber grip on the pen attracts dust and lint.
- Does not come with a travel sleeve (is this really too much to ask?)


All in all, Intuos4 boasts many notable upgrades from the previous Intuos3 line. If you have been holding off for a Intuos3, then this is perhaps the time for you to finally jump on the Intuos boat. Due to the size limitations, the Small Intuos4 lacks a few features available in the other models of the Intuos4 line (notably the OLED display, dual USB ports, etc.), but the price difference between the Small and the Medium ($199 vs $349) tablets does not seem to justify for the price jump (especially since I don't have the space to accommodate for a medium tablet).

Again, if this is your first time shopping for a tablet, then I would recommend trying out the Bamboo line of products before considering the Intuos.

I enjoy the Intuos4 tablet, and I would recommend it to any serious graphics designers/photographers/animators/etc. This is a worthy investment and you won't regret it.


Final Verdict: Wacom, you have done it again. ^^