Electronics : Wacom Bamboo Fun Medium Graphics Tablet

Rating: - wacom bamboo with zbrush, tv paint and toonboom studio
I bought the wacom bamboo medium [A5 size] for use with ZBrush 3.1 mainly and have to say it's wonderful and much better than my old wacom A6 slate, i find the size of the tablet is just about right as i like to have the tablet/pen 'available' on my desk and so it's no too large that it takes over the space on my desk where mu mouse goes..i can use both with no hassle.

A larger tablet, like the intuos A5> has a much larger surroud area or an A4 tablet may have to be stored away when not in use.
using in on my 24" screen is fine [HD size res screen]..sure there's abit of traveling from one corner to another but the A6 size works well and is of high enough res to sculpt in zbrush without a hitch.

I also use the bamboo medium tablet on occasion with my laptop with it's screen res at 1200x800 and it works just as well with zbrush, tv paint and toonboom stuido.

overall it's a great device and well worth the money, it also comes bundled with some apps as well which is a nice touch to get epople up n running with a pen enabled paint app.

the tablet also ships with spare nibs though there's no nib replacement tool bundled..i just used my HP tablet pc's pen tool or you could use some small nose pliers for the task also.

5 Stars for value from me.

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Rating: - ...but how is it compared to the Intuos range?
I'm not going to bark on about how great it is. Other people have done that for me.

Instead i thought i'd answer a question i wanted to know before i bought it, ie how does it compare to the pricier sibling, the Intuos 3 range.

While i don't actually own a Wacom Intuos 3 i've used one extensively during freelance work for a couple of companies in london. I needed one simply to carry on the work from home without pilfering one of theirs. I sure there are stats somewhere to prove me wrong but this is my opinion.

Apart from the obvious price difference (around £90 for the A5 Intuos) one reason i considered the bamboo is because of it's size. The area surrounding the Intuos' touch pad is rather large and tends to dominate your entire desk area. Some people may prefer this, it gives your wrists somewhere to rest which i could imagine would be preferable for extended use. But for someone like me who uses it briefly the size of the bamboo is just about perfect, especially given that it has exactly the same touch pad size (A5). Plus it fits snuggly next to my monitor when not in use.

So what are the comprimises? Well, out of the box, there is a very slight lack of quality compared to the Intuos. It's difficult to put my finger on but i guess it would be a combination of several small factors. The bamboo feels vaguely light weight (i don't think i'm the only one who sub-consciously equates quality with weight) and lacks the silky smooth laminate finish, the pen lacks the firm rubber and the weight of the Intuos' and, when pen is touched to pad, the bamboo feels a little like a "scrape" compared to the Intuos' "wipe". I think it's safe to say, however, that compared to the cheaper alternative out there, the bamboo still oozes quality hence why i gave it 4 out of 5. Remember, i'm only doing a subjective comparison of the two pads.

Common to the Intuos, the bamboo has 4 main assignable buttons plus a "touch ring" commonly assigned to zooming and scrolling. The Intuos actually has 4 buttons per side allowing for both left and right hand use, but i believe these buttons can all be assigned differenct keystrokes/functions actually rendering the Intuos with 8 assignable buttons. You're unlikely to reach over your drawing hand to use them when the keyboard is right in front of you, but having the buttons down the side felt more logical to me as you generally sit with your hands side by side.

The software for both pads share many similar functions like "tip firmness", "double-click speed" etc but i believe the Intuos' software is more flexible allowing the button functions to change depending on the application being used plus button assignment options are more extensive. Given that i rarely, if ever, used these functions i really don't miss them.

So far so good, but how's the Bamboo in use?

Well the first thing i noticed was the different feel. Mentioned earlier, the bamboo feels a little rough when moving the pen over the pad. This may be because it's brand new and it's not a particularly big issue, but worth a mention. I started by loading up a blank white page in photoshop and just scribbling. To my horror, the bamboo jolted sideways at one point leaving a perfectly horizontal notch in my otherwise smooth line. On further investigation i realised that this was due to a the computer simply catching up with itself. The problem has not occured since.

In motion I'm pleased to report that the Bamboo exhibits all the directional sensitivity of the Intuos with, as far as i could tell, three differences:

The first being the distance in which you can move the pen away from the pad while still controlling the mouse pointer. I may be wrong and there may be figures to disprove me but i reckon the Bamboo pen maintains control of the mouse up to about 9-10mm off the touch pad. I can't be sure, but it felt like a noticeably shorter distance than that of the Intuos. All this really means is that, when you're moving your pointer around the screen using the pen, if your pen reaches a certain distance away from the pad your mouse pointer stops dead onscreen. It takes a little getting used to but, again, it's no major problem.

The second difference i noticed was the minimum pressure that the pen would "draw" with. To test this i set up a blank photoshop document with a brush that increased in size the more pressure that was used. With the Intuos, by merely touching the pad with the pen a line would be drawn, albeit a very thin one. The Bamboo pen can be touched to the pad lightly without any line being drawn until a small amount of pressure is applied, at which point the brush in photoshop seems to "kick in" at a given size. This leads me to believe that the Bamboo cannot go below a given pressure threshold rendering it's pressure guage less sensitive than the Intuos'. I don't believe the Bamboo pen was designed to be dragged over the pad to simply move the mouse around as the pressure needed to actually start drawing is too slight.

The third difference doesn't affect me but i presume it's quite important to certain artists and that is the Bamboo's lack of tilt. The intuoso measures the angle of the pen on the pad to increase tactility.


Anyway, like i said, this is purely a comparison with the Intuos. If any of the above sounds like it'd bother you or you need a tablet to use on a daily basis then go for the Intuos. Otherwise the Bamboo is a perfectly good alternative for personal and, in most cases, professional use. I noticed another review insinuated that the software is slightly complex but the Bamboo works fine once the drivers are installed and there's no need to go in and tweak the settings unless you want to change the default button functions etc.

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Rating: - Absolutely great!
I have a Wacom Bamboo Fun Medium Graphics Tablet, and I'm using it to creat digital artworks, this tablet is one of the best tablets in the market taking in consideration its price!

It has many features like zooming, scrolling, thickness control, etc.
and it's compatible with Windows Vista input panel system..
Moreover, it comes with two good photo editing programs: AdobePhotoShop Elements and ArtRage2..

The bottom line.. it is reliable, light, easy to use, and worth every penny!

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Rating: - Not just for FUN
The FUN branding on this product made me think it was consumer orientated and I've held back buying it for a while. However, it has everything I need in a tablet and it is such an improvement from using a mouse.

The accuracy is spot on and the pressure sensitive nib comes into its own when you're trying to do detailed work and don't want to keep changing brush sizes all the time. The bundled software seems OK but I didn't install anything other than the drivers which work great on OS X 10.4 and 10.5.

One thing to note is that if you have two monitors it works across both - seems logical but means each screen only uses half of the tablet. Still, it's not a problem.

If you use Photoshop you need this tablet.

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Rating: - Definitely for advanced users, not so much for the rest of us
This is a peripheral that has complex capabilities and permits to perform a variety of functions related to digital photos and graphics. There are two parts to this product, the actual physical tablet and the software included. The tablet allows using a pen that has the functionality of a mouse and more, including right and left click buttons. Handling the pen is a little awkward at first, especially because the starting point of the pen on the tablet alters the initial positioning of the cursor on the screen. This definitely makes sense, since it is necessary for being able to draw on the tablet using a set point of reference, but if you are using the pen for normal mouse functions, it takes a while to get used to. The mouse provided has the typical functionalities of a wireless mouse and does not provide any benefits beyond this. There are also customizable buttons on the tablet, similar to the hot keys you have on your keyboard for browsing the web, accessing your email, etc. One in particular allows for zooming in and out, which is very handy when working on pictures trying to perfect them.

The software provided with the product is pretty advanced too, and maybe this should have given me a hint regarding how user friendly the product was for novices. Corel allows creating artwork and has a variety of tools at your disposal. This is where I found the pen to be most useful, and I even tried creating handwritten notes, being reasonably successful. Photoshop provides tools to improve your digital photos and alter them in creative ways. My experience with this software is limited, so I had a hard time extracting serious benefits from using the tablet in this environment. I can see though, how professionals or serious users would benefit from using the pen and tablet to alter pictures. In my case, I could see the usefulness of Photoshop, especially with the nik Color Efex add on, but I did not understand how to incorporate the tablet usage in this process.

The installation of the drivers for the hardware and the software suite was straightforward and even though it took a few minutes, it was completely hassle free. I think Bamboo could definitely improve their User Guide with further ideas on how to use the tools in combination with the tablet. Overall, I believe that advanced users will find this peripheral very useful, but the rest of us are likely to be overwhelmed by its complexity.