Wacom Intuos 3 A4

Wacom are the industry leaders in tablet technology. Their range of graphics tablets are of exceptional quality and Wacom provide affordable solutions for everybody.

The Intuos range of tablets is targeted at professionals and comes with a higher price tag when compared with Graphire range, which is targeted toward general home use. However, being a professional piece of kit you get hardware of distinctly higher quality and undeniable precision with accurate tilt and pressure sensitivity.

The tablet comes with a batteryless digital pen and mouse. Also included with the pen, is a range of different nibs which change the way the pen feels when gliding over the tablet's surface, making the digital pen feel more authentic. For example, one nib makes it feel more like a marker which ultimately changes the way you use the pen itself. Any artist will greatly appreciate this feature and will help anyone struggling with the transition from taditional materials to a digital medium. The pen is confortable and much thicker than the Intuos 2's included pen, and comes with a rubber grip making it comfotable to hold. As was expected, the Intuos 3 pen comes with a digital rubber at one end allowing you to spin it round as if it were a pencil, and begin erasing your work. This may require setup in the tablet properties window, but more on that later. Anyone who has experienced the annoying habbit of the Intuos 2's pen holder falling over thanks to its bad design, will be relieved to find that the intuos 3 is kept firmly in place with the newly designed holder which keeps the pen upright, perpendicular to the surface it's resting on.

Important note: Only tools designed for use with the Intuos 3 will work. For example, if you own an Intuos 2 pen, it will not work with an Intuos 3 tablet.

Despite the pen and mouse being completely batteryless, the feedback from pen/mouse to screen is impossibly fast. In fact, you will instantly notice that the cursor travels much smoother than any standard, wired mouse. This possible thanks to Wacom's proprietary 'penabled' technology which is the key to cordless, battery-less and pressure sensitive computer devices.

As stated in my introduction, the Intuos 3 has remarkable tilt sensitivity which can detect tilt of up to 60 degrees. This makes the tool as accurate as possible to the real world materials, especially as you are able to purchase additional peripherals such as an airbrush pen.

The most notible feature of the Intuos 3 when compared to the previous tablets in the range, is the addition of the 'ExpressKeys'. These are clickable buttons on the side of the tablet which by default, represent the common keyboard buttons CTRL, ALT, SHIFT and Space, as well as a touch sensitive strip which works are a digital scroll bar. This is designed to aid workflow, though in my time of testing this product I found it difficult to adjust to them. All sizes of the tablet exluding the A6 version, come with these ExpressKeys which makes the tablet universal to both left and right handed people. Also important to note is that these buttons are fully programmable so you can change the way they are configured to work. Cleverly, you can configure the tablet and it's ExpressKeys, as well as the other peripherals (pen, airbrush, mouse etc) on an application level. This powerful feature allows you to set one button to change brush size in Photoshop, for example, whilst having this same button do something completely different in Alias Maya.

Configuration is easily made through the driver properties tool, which can be found in your Windows control panel. It's here that you are able to change the sensitiviy of your tablet, the hardness of brushes, the eraser, tilt sensitivity, pessure sensitivty, application-specific requirments etc. These drivers come with your tablet and are very easy to install. Other bundled software includes Corel Painter Essentials2 and Corel Painter 8, which takes full advantage of the Intuos 3's functionality.

Finally, i'll close this section by saying that the design of the tablet is a massive step up from previous tablet versions. It's beautful and elegant. Please see the screenshots on this page as evidence.

Although I don't have any real complaints with the tablet itself, I would like to bring up a few points here:

1) I personally don't like using the mouse. This is mainly due to the fact that you've just spent a fair amount of money, and want to keep it safely out of the way for when you next need it, rather than wearing it out with coffee stains and general use.

2) By default the pen and mouse is set to be mapped, rather than free-roaming. This means that your cursor will always be placed on the monitor in relation to the position of the pen/mouse on the tablets surface.

3) I use dual screens and the surface of the tablet is mapped accross both screens, meaning that the left side of the tablet's drawing area represents the left screen, while the right side of the drawing area is mapped to the right screen. I couldn't find an easy way to resolve the issue other than disabling one monitor.

4) It may just be me, but I found it difficult to adjust to the ExpressKeys and generally I just used the keyboard alternatives. I also used the tablet in a 3D Application (Alias Maya) and although it proved useful when using Maya's artisan tool for sculpting, I found it held me back quite considerably, especially when trying to navigate Maya's viewports. However, anyone interested in ZBrush sculpting will find the Intuos 3 a blessing.

Costing ?305.99 brand new (perhaps cheaper now), the Intuos 3 is the best option for professionals looking for an affordable tablet solution. With such tilt accuracy and precision you're hard pressed to find anything better for much cheaper.

Highly recommended