Customer Reviews

Trust Stylus Design Tablet 15356

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I've just got myself one of these graphics tablets after having been wanting one for quite a while. I actually got mine for £24 from ASDA which is quite a lot cheaper than amazon.

Once I got it out of the box I was very suprised by how slim and lightweight it was. So, first impressions are good. After having set it up it wasn't long before I was teaching it to recognise my handwriting and doing some photo editing. As graphics tablets go it's pretty responsive to the pen pressure and in no time I was using it with Adobe Photoshop elements 6 editing photos with ease.

I have it running with Windows Vista Home Premium (32 bit) and it works very well. I am struggling to find faults with it. For the money and what it can do it's better than a vast majority of more expensive graphics tablets out there. What I also like about it is the hot keys around the writing surface which are so useful for navigating your computer without touching the mouse or mouse-pad. Another plus is that is doesn't slow your system down at all.

It connects to the PC or laptop with USB 2.0 and the pen runs on a single AAA battery. For the pen I would recommend getting a rechargeable battery as it's more economical. I honestly can't praise this excellent piece of kit any more.

Highly recommended!

Trust Slimline Design Tablet TB-5300 This is the first graphics tablet I have bought or even used, but I have found it just the job for the task I needed help with, which is cutting items out of images and general Photoshop/Paintshop Pro drawing and editing tasks for my hobby as a painter. This model has a relatively small work area, but in fact that has not proved a problem at all, because you can enlarge work on the PC screen and use the tablet for a small area of the whole, which is how you would work anyway. Much more accurate than a mouse for drawing - the pen is easy to use, and by some electronic miracle the tablet knows exactly where it is even when there is no contact whatever. The tablet and pen are easy to programme to your preferred settings, and versatile. I still use a mouse for general PC activity, finding that the pen is not so easy to use for general clicking - it moves too easily, whereas the mouse stays in one place unless pushed! But this tablet has proved a very valuable addition to my peripheral hardware.

I wasn't really expecting this tablet to be great because of the price, but it's been brilliant! It's a nice size and has lots of shortcuts on the tablet itself which is very handy. One thing I will say is, it does feel a bit flimsy as it's quite thin and light and I managed to accidentally dent the surface (though to its credit, it still works fine...!). Other than that it's been perfect for what I needed.

Surprisingly good quality, works on windows 7. Very sleek slimline design! However it will make a windows tablet driver run all of the time taking up on average 14% of your power (even when unplugged) so only buy if you have a fairly powerful PC. I have a Core 2 quad 2.6Ghz and the difference is not noticable but may be on older systems. Otherwise works perfect! Good service from amazon as always!

I'm thrilled to bits with my Trust tablet which I treated myself to as a Christmas present. I've always wanted a drawing tablet but found them generally to be either too expensive or to have been given rubbish reviews. At this price, it was affordable and, as I already have a Trust wireless keyboard and mouse which have given excellent service over the past year or so, thought it worth a try.

The tablet arrived well-packed as always with Amazon and was dispatched promptly (again as always). It is very lightweight and perhaps some might consider it flimsy (I'm not sure as I have no experience of tablets) but for me this has made it very portable and it seems sturdy enough in use. It comes with stylus, batteries and a couple of spare pen tips. The manufacturer's instructions are the barest minimum but were enough for me to get the tablet up and working within half an hour. I was a bit disappointed that there was no online manual with more detail and that the manufacturer's website has very little additional information.

I found that it works effectively in both Paintshop Pro and Microsoft Visio as well as with the Artweaver drawing/painting software which was included (that program should be sufficient for anyone who just wants to start with a basic graphics program and tablet). Setting it up for tablet area, pen pressure and programming the two buttons was very easy with the configuration dialog, which sits in the Windows tray so it is easy to reconfigure it on the fly if you switch to a different program or have alternating requirements within the same program.

There are a generous number of touch-sensitive buttons around the edges of the tablet, some pre-programmed some programmable (through the configuration dialog) so the stylus could be used as the only mouse, although it has no scroll button. I used it alongside my Trust wireless mouse and keyboard, all plugged into the same USB hub and there was no conflict so I could switch as I felt most comfortable. I did find the stylus very easy for switching between PSP tools quickly (such as the paintbrush and eraser) and for changing my brush characteristics on the brush toolbar. The menus are outside the tablet area so could not be used with the stylus. You can also switch off any of the four rows of buttons from the configuration popup so that you don't inadvertently press them while drawing.

As I hadn't used a graphics tablet before, it took a bit of getting used to. I was very unsure at first about getting the correct angle and timid about applying pressure. I've always held pens in a peculiar way so learning to hold it close to the tip and almost vertical (which brought the best results for me) took some getting used to. I also found I had to zoom in almost to pixel size at first but was able to zoom out more when I got better control.

I'm not good at freehand drawing at the best of times so I took some fairly simple line drawings into PSP, converted them to white lines on a black background, put a drawing layer over the image and traced over the white lines in a bright colour. This made it clear when I had gone over the lines and had to erase them and deleting the original image layer allowed me to judge overall progress. I found that, within an hour or so I had gained pretty near full control of the stylus and was drawing quite smoothly at a reasonable zoom level.

I have not tried using it with Microsoft Office except to note that the programs recognise it,but I understand you can also use it for handwritten annotations to documents, spreadsheets etc. There is also a sturdy tracing sheet over the pad so that you can trace a paper image without scanning it in, which I haven't yet tried either.

I would have liked more options for configuring the buttons on the stylus barrel as I tend to use the mouse more than hotkeys. There are 2 buttons which can be configured as Left or Right click or double-click or Milddle button click. If I train myself to use the touch buttons on the tablet however this may not feel such a bad omission. I also would like to have a cover for it and something to attach the stylus to the tablet as I fear it might get lost or damaged but I can make something to do that myself.

I think this is a thoughtfully-designed piece of kit, packing in a lot for a low price. Of course at this price it does not have the more sophisticated configurable features of more expensive tablets. It would not therefore be suited to a professional graphics artist. However, it is much more than a child's toy and for an amateur artist like me has provided a new and interesting tool with plenty of scope for exploring new techniques. I'd say it was a good buy for anyone who already has some experience with graphics software and would like to give graphics tablets a try but doesn't want to spend too much at this stage.

I wanted a tablet for general photoshop work and sketching, to use in conjunction with my 3d animation software.

This table is excellent if you are looking for something cheap and good for the price. Honestly this is the first tablet that I've bought so I'm probably not the best reviewer, however, I did use other tablets at friend's places and I have to admit I'm very impressed with it. In fact, I have bought two of them, one for myself and one for my younger sister who is into drawing of manga and she has not had any problems with it. I've used it both on windows xp and windows 7, and it works perfectly fine. Installation is smooth and everything works the way it's supposed to. Do mind to follow the instructions to the letter though because windows 7 seems to install drivers on it's own once plugged in, and this can be messy if you get driver issues (just install the trust drivers first and then follow the on screen instructions to avoid complications). In windows xp everything went smooth and as expected from a mature OS. I also tried to use it on my Ubuntu system, but though I have found several How Tos to make it work, and apparently it works for a lot of people, I didn't manage to get it working-I'm quite knowledgeable with Linux btw. One more thing I'd like to say is that unfortunately it doesn't work properly with gimp, due to some gimp internal bug.

Software that has been tested with this table and that works perfectly fine under windows includes photoshop 3sc, photoshop 4sc, Corel painter 11,Maya 8.5 and Maya 2010, alchemy drawing and Blender3d-very useful when you are using a sculpting-the pressure sensitivity is just awsome.

I really suggest this product to anyone that wants to start digital drawing but doesn't want to spent too much money to see if it's his/her thing. For the things I use for it it's extremely helpful and honestly there's not a single day when I don't use my tablet. This is definatelly one of the best pc accessories I've bought.

I read quite a few reviews of this product before purchasing it. Most were surprised how good it was, considering the low price.
I can't help but agree. The build quality is good. The set up was fast and easy. Most of all, it really is very good to use.

I bought this specifically to use with OneNote and to write Chinese Characters (for Cantonese, easier than using a keyboard based IME given the lack of standardization), and for the most part, it works well. I've been using it with Windows Vista. The handwriting recognition is impressively integrated, and the customizable buttons around the edge are easy to modify and useful. You can also turn them off so that you can use a larger area of the tablet. You can move the mouse by holding it a short distance above the pad, and click by bringing the two into contact.

Although it has three buttons (the point and seesaw buttons on the side), the latter two are not especially well placed, and I found them difficult to use effectively. They're also unresponsive sometimes, which can be frustrating for general usage.

There are a couple of further caveats however - there's a strange glitch where the pointer will lose x-axis positioning, resolutely sticking to the sides of the screen. The only resolution I could find for this was to restart the system (not convenient when trying to take lecture notes). Additionally, at some point the tablet reconfigured itself so that it wouldn't move all the way to the borders of the screen, which made scrolling unnecessarily difficult; this was only fixed by reinstalling the software.

Finally, beware of OneNote-related suckage. As of the 2007 version, it's poor for student note taking (majoring in physics), since the hand-drawn diagrams have an unfortunate tendency to spontaneously un-link, rendering notes useless. For most other purposes however, it's good - I had a go with it cutting out images in Photoshop, and there it was far superior to a mouse (for both ease and accuracy).

For most purposes however, it's responsive and accurate - although it's not quite as good overall as the comparable Wacom tablet I test drove, for the price it's a great starter tablet.

I bought this for my wife who is using it with Photoshop CS4 on Windows XP. It was a bit fiddly to set up but once up and running it has proved to be really good. You do, however, get what you pay for. Build quality is just about OK, the pen looks and feels cheap and the user instructions are not very helpful. But for the price it is actually really good. If you have only ever used a mouse for photo editing then you could be in for a real surprise at just how much more control you get with a tablet like this.

I had great hopes for this having read the glowing reviews posted here.
However, despite being computer savvy, I couldn't get it going properly on Vista SP2.

After installing the lateset Trust driver from the website, the pen cursor would only work on the up/down axis. If I removed the trust driver Vista's own tablet driver would take over, but then I would have no access to the trust control panel in order to set the Tablet's screen ratio, pen pressure etc. It was also a bit hit and miss trying to get from the bottom to the top of my screen (22" 1680x1050).Even disabling Vista's Tablet services made no difference.

Having said all that, it works perfectly in XP SP3. Unfortunately my main computer has Vista SP2, so it's not much use to me.

Letter to support produces the stock reply "Download latest drivers" (already tried), so if this tablet goes OK with Vista, I wish someone would say how to do so.