Wacom Intuos4 PTK-640 Medium A5 Graphics Tablet

Sleek, stylish, very smooth and easy to use. Premium digital graphics tablet with a premium price, but well worth it, assuming you know what you're doing with.

Now, if you just want to use a tablet as a mouse replacement, you might want to consider buying some of wacoms cheaper models, like the Bamboo MTE450KEN, which costs about the sixth of the price of this. Now I've never used that one and can't tell you if it's good or not, but just something to keep in mind. If you're just using tablet as a mouse replacement, the 2048 different pressure levels this thing can measure, won't do you much good. But if you are looking for something a bit more serious, well then this might just be the thing for you.

I do have to admit, I quite like using my computer with this. It is very intuitive to use a pen to control the computer; I don't much use my mouse anymore these days. The tablet is more accurate, more natural, and I'll probably also avoid wrist injuries. It has a few tricks up its sleeve also (besides the customizable touch wheel and menus). The pen can also do what they call 'pen flicks', where you do a quick move on the pen to emulate a page up, or back or forward actions for example. These work really well when browsing for example.

I did have doubts about if I should get the bigger model, the A5 sounds so small, but actually the drawing area is slightly bigger than A5. If you put a A5 paper on the tablet vertically, the touch surface is the height of the A5, but much wider, as it is a wide screen tablet. I did however read a lot of comments before buying, saying that bigger isn't necessary better when it comes to graphics tablets, and this seems indeed to be true. It is very accurate, and if it was bigger you would be doing much bigger movements, and possibly tiring yourself while doing it. Yes for a very serious artist, painter or CAD professional the L or the XL model might make sense, but all in all the M size is pretty good.

The installation of the tablet is very easy. Just install the software from the bundled CD, attach the tablet via USB and you're all set. The installation software works like a charm. You can then configure the tablet to work differently with different applications, e.g. pressure sensitivity, double click delay etc. You can also customize the buttons, the wheel and the custom menus to be different for different applications. The configuration application does do it's job, but it took me a few extra minutes to figure out how it works. For the price I would've expected a little more effort put into that. The configuration software looks and feels like something from ten years ago, it doesn't have the cutting edge feeling to it which the tablet has otherwise. Well maybe that is a bit unfair, as the configuration is easy after you figure out the application.

You can also download one software from Wacoms site for free, there are three options (including Adobe photoshop elements), but you can only select one, and once you've made your choice, that is it. But yes, you do want a drawing software to get the full benefit from this, this is meant for drawing (sketching, drawing, inking, coloring etc). So that's what I'm learning currently (previously I've only drawn with pens and ink), so we'll see how that goes. I mean, how hard can it be.

The pen itself is very comfortable, sturdy, but not heavy. It slides effortlessly on the tablet without scratching. And did I mention how stylish the damn thing is? I need to upgrade my work space to suit around it better. It does feel like the premium product it should be. I can understand why this tablet is on every digital artists table.

Highly recommneded, assuming you know what to do with it.

I cannot recommend this product to anyone as the nib issue is too great to ignore. They have designed a great, feature loaded product which is left completely useless because of the speed at which nibs wear down, leaving the user in a committed cycle of constantly buying nib replacements and worrying about scratching the tablet surface. The point of this product is enable to "free you up" digitally to work creatively. How can you do that when you are constantly thinking about the wear this product is taking? I am not talking about long term wear - the nibs on these can literally be going down and scratching the tablet in hours.

I would urge anybody thinking about this product to think about this carefully - look at Wacom's own support forum for the anger people have about this. Wacom have known about this issue for months and just can't be bothered to sort it - after all, they know people will be locked in the cycle of buying more nibs from them...

I love Wacom's previous products and their approach, so I am as baffled as anyone else as to how they completely screwed up and will not listen to the massive feedback they are getting with this issue.

I returned my product - utter garbage.

***UPDATE*** The complaints about the nib issue on Wacom's Europe forum now run into 64 pages long! It's full of frustration from many customers, with Wacom basically ignoring the problem now. This is now over a year and still nothing has been done. This is extremely poor performance and service by Wacom. Again, I suggest customers give this product a wide berth as Wacom obviously have no intention of fixing it nor indeed do they care about the huge amount of poor feedback they are getting about it. Customers come last at Wacom.

This is the second tablet I've used from Wacom, the first being a very basic Graphire Series A6 tablet. I've mostly used it with Adobe Creative Suite and CAD software, where precision is fundamental, and the Graphire has met the job on most occasions apart from super fine work in Photoshop. However, the nib has eventually worn out and it was time for a new tablet, so the choice was either the Bamboo (which is a basic tablet, but good value for money) and the new Intuos 4.
Eventually, it was the greater precision and functionality that persuaded me to buy the Medium size Intuos 4, and it's been fantastic.

The new OLED function buttons are a fabulous idea and enable you to see at a glance what the functions have been assigned to a particular program. Please note that the small tablet does not have these OLED markings.
The pen is sturdy, and well balanced which means you can use it for a long time without being tired. In addition the new scroll wheel (like the IPod of old) on the tablet, enables you to assign scroll or zoom function to it, which means you end up using both your hands and less time on the keyboard.

Three minor criticisms are:
1. The glossy black plastic where the function keys are, which looks great when you first laid the tablet onto the desk, but soon becomes covered with greasy finger marks.
2. The rubber on the pen picks up dust easily, so make sure you keep it in the dedicated pen stand to avoid this issue.
3. The function buttons have to be assigned when the program is running on your computer. Surely, most of these (giant) companies can come with downloadable default settings for the Wacom tablet to enable configuring this a lot less time consuming, as they're often duplicated in the software.

I would have given it 5 stars had the price been a lot cheaper, so shop around. However, with the free software bundled in: Adobe Elements, Corel Painter etc it makes the tablet worth every penny.