Wacom Cintiq 12WX Interactive Pen Display

I've had my Cintiq 12WX since October but have been holding back on giving a review for a couple of months, mostly so that I can get a really good feel for the thing (I didn't want to fall into the trap of giving a very expensive piece of equipment 5 stars when it was just out of the box and I was still in the "OH WOW!" phase of Cintiq 12WX ownership).

The "OH WOW!" phase? Well, yeah. Going from a traditional graphics tablet, where your eyes are not looking at what your hands are doing, to this thing, where you draw directly into the screen, has a big "wow" effect on you. It feels much more natural.

Things I like.

Drawing directly into the screen feels great! This more naturalistic drawing does seem to lead to greater productivity (at least for me) since you're not constantly trying to guess what your hand or the pen is doing in relation to the onscreen brush/pointer/cursor. I really love this.

There's no delay between what you do with the pen, and what appears on the screen. I mention this because Wacom makes a larger tablet like this which has been criticised for having bad pen-to-display lag. The Cintiq 12WX seems to avoid this problem by literally being two devices, a graphics tablet and a monitor, which your computer treats as completely separate devices. You're probably thinking that there are three or four wires that come out of the tablet now. Actually, there is only one cable and it plugs into a little black box. All the different wires, leads and cables (power cable, usb cable and monitor cable) sprout from the little black box instead. It's a nice solution to avoiding the 'wire clutter'.

I don't know if it's the drawing surface or the supplied nib, but the friction between surface and pen feels just about right (for me at least). With my previous Wacom tablet I used the high friction nibs for a less 'slippy' feel to the pen, and I've known others who tape a sheet of paper over the drawing surface to get the same result. Of course this drawing 'feel' is just my personal preference.

For a tablet with a monitor built into it, the 12WX is surprisingly light. It's much lighter than a stand-alone monitor for instance, and is only slightly heavier than my old tablet. It's also very thin (probably just over a centimetre in thickness). The combination of those two things makes the tablet very moveable on your desktop and very portable too.

The rear aluminium stand gives the tablet two drawing positions - flat on the table, or a low angle like an easel. When not in use you can save desk space by standing the tablet up at a high angle with the stand, which lets you use it like a second monitor. The stand is stiff enough that you don't have to worry about the tablet moving, though it's not stiff enough to allow you to draw on it at any angle.

When the tablet is flat on the desk it has a rotation point on the back that allows you to rotate the entire tablet like a piece of paper when you're drawing - a very useful feature which isn't possible with non-display tablets (because you can't rotate the display).

There are ten express keys (five on each side) that can be re-mapped to just about any keystroke or function that you can imagine (a great time saver). When the tablet is up on its stand they're comfortably under the thumb too. I've mapped my most used keystrokes and tools to the pen and the left-hand side express keys, meaning that I rarely have to use the keyboard when drawing.

Things I'm not so keen on.

The pen tracking on the very edges of the screen (the last 5-8mm or so) is rather bad. It's fine for dragging scroll bars and selecting tools, but not for drawing. However, this only affects a tiny percentage of the screen (the very edge) and the tracking on the rest of the screen is absolutely A+.

If you're right-handed you'll find that the lower right area of the screen (ie - the area where your hand will be most of the time) will get pretty toasty after prolonged usage. It's not painful, but I find myself working with my hand raised above the surface when it gets too toasty because of prolonged use. (The area is probably where the monitor power enters the tablet or something). It won't affect left-handers, but righties might find that they have to minimise their project and take a break occasionally to allow the tablet to cool. That 'hotspot' is probably in the worst possible place.

On balance I'd say the good things about this tablet *massively* outweigh the bad. It's one of those upgrades that you never regret, like upgrading your TV from black-and-white to colour, or your music player from a CD-player to a MP3-player. After the upgrade you wonder how you managed without it.

The worst thing about the 12WX is the price. It's probably about 2-3 times more expensive than your current non-display tablet. If you're upgrading your tablet, and if you don't mind spending a lot of money for a really good tool, then this thing is for you. However, because of the price, I would not recommend this as anyone's *first* graphics tablet.

I bought this tablet a couple of days ago after spotting it when browsing tablets on the internet. I have to say that after an initial worry of should i spend that much money, then the excitement when i received it and then the slight disappointment after my first use, it turns out the Wacom Cintiq 12wx is a fantastic product and im very glad i bought it.

Firstly lets get the slightly un-true facts out of the way - Wacom claims the Cintiq will work straight out of the box, but this is not true if you have an imac and mac book pros or any other machine that doesnt have a video port (VGA or DVI), or a graphics card with 2 ports. If using an imac etc you will have to buy the apple mini display adapter or a USB to DVI adapter to enable you to connect via the DVI cable, luckily i had already found this out and purchased at the same time, but i think most places don't mention this.

Once out of the box, you'll be quite surprised (well i was) at how many cables there are, you have a very chunky 6ft cable running from the tablet to the converter unit, then from the converter unit you have your dvi to dvi / dvi to vga cable (which is pretty thick), thats connected to the newly purchased DVI to USB adapter lead, you have a usb cable and the power lead which has another connection to the actual plug, so all in all its not quite as portable as they make out.

The only other thing is to make sure you download the proper manual, i thought i had calibrated the tablet as instructed by the enclosed manual but just couldn't get the results i wanted, turns out things have to be much more finely tuned - which is very easy and only took a second.

So whats good - well everything else really, i personally love the fact you can see what your drawing, it makes such a difference. There is no pen lag at all and the pressure / tilt sensitivity are very good (once set up correctly!). You can have the same image open in photoshop on both screens and work on one or both at the same time. If you edit your picture on the Cintiq it will automatically update the picture on the mac or pc or you can switch between monitors or mirror your monitor to the Cintiq, but resolution does get reduced.

If you have the tablet lying flat then you can rotate it as it has a little nob on the back, but again, only if you have space and the cables to kind of restrict it a bit. It also has a stand and you can have it pretty much at any angle.

The pen is pretty cool, not too heavy and has an eraser feature on the other end, also pressure sensitive. It comes with 4 normal nibs, 1 felt and 1 stroke. I like the felt one the best and have purchased some more nibs from wacom direct. You also get a pen stand which is good, saves losing the pen!

All in all its an excellent product and i would definitely recommend buying if you want one, but i do advise looking around for prices as i paid £799 for mine and the adapter cost £39.99 - (not an apple version as i heard there can be problems with those).

I hope this review helps anyone thinking of buying, check out some videos on you tube as well. Thanks

The Cintiq 12WX is certainly a wonderful little piece of kit, just like drawing straight onto your screen, as, well, effectively, thats what you're doing as it insists on mirroring your main monitor.
The customizeable buttons on either side of the working space are very handy for speed (and just plain laziness/convenience). The design including the fold away stand/bar at the back means its good for working at a desk/table/worksurface and comfortably settling with it on your lap if you are so inclined.
Definately a joy to work with for digital artists. Also true for those traditional artists that are thinking of moving to digital as it removes the whole alsmost 'learning to draw again' of getting hand and eye used to monitor/tablet split, you just have to get used to the odd texture. Said texture may be the only little problem for digital and traditional method artists as you get that visual reaction you've always wanted in your digital work, but you still have that alien texture/missing textual response...just perhaps a little bugbear to overcome.
Also, it is important to not be fooled that the cintiq is just like a digital notebook, its not quite as convenient. Inspiration can come anywhere, and unlike a paper sketchbook and pen which you can take and whip out pretty much anywhere, the cintiq is stuck to the pc or laptop, and you can't walk around with that strapped to you. It's like a monitor, its ready to go when your computers booted up and programs are loaded. It's a very fancy, very lovely, easy to use, wonderful graphics tablet. But thats what it is, a graphics tablet, not a portable digital sketchbook (we're all still waiting for those).
There are some wires, but theres only one that'll be on your lap connecting the tablet to everything else so its not so bad.
It's easy to instal and calibrate, and as soon as its set up, its good to go. (small warning to widescreen laptop users, you might find the little darling will resize the working area of your screen on the actual laptop as it has a 'native' resolution, which wacom insists is in its best interest for optimal performance)
Its a curious little thing, I'm still getting used to mine and overcoming the texture issue (seemed to naturally retreat to traditional media after using it, the feeling just wasn't quite right), but once you get going with it, it is fun, accurate, and probably the closest thing you will get to digital paper, the pressure sensitivity sees to that.