Intuos5 Review

The 10-year reign of my Wacom Intuos2 is now over. That purple tablet was definitely durable and is probably the most used and oldest of my digital arsenal. I recently got the Wacom Intuos5 Medium tablet. So far it's been pretty cool, but there are a few neat little features that have been added that I have to get accustom to. Pretty much like driving a new car.

Pros: 

• Touch screen! WHAT?! Use your hands to guesture pans, rotation and swipes. Techtonik your face off while painting.
• High sensitivity and tilt-enabled stylus pen. Also, rotating barrel sensitivity also works too! But con, you have to buy an "Art Pen" separately for about $100.
• Cool buttons and circular dial. Hotkeys galore! 
• Customizing is ridiculous. You can customize all the buttons and dials to what they cycle to. You can even custom the touch-gestures! I've customized my 5-fingered swipe down gesture, when in Photoshop.. to bring up the desktop! And if I'm on my desktop and I do the swipe movement again, it brings up Photoshop! Fancy-pants is fancy.
• Wireless capability. You have to buy a wireless kit separately, but if you ever do, you can attach it to your tablet!
• Toothy paper-like textured drawing surface. This depends on the person. I feel the texture does create a better sense of control in pen movement, but does cause some other problems addressed under Cons.

Cons:

• Getting back to the toothy texture of the drawing surface, it can cause problems with it creating friction from your hand. Worst of all though, it grinds down the stylus nib like crazy! I've never changed the nib of my old stylus from my old tablet of 10 years. I've had this tablet for a week now and the nib is very noticeably grinding down into a slant. Luckily, they give you several nib refills, but that's beside the point(pun not intended). 
• Active area is much smaller than tablet surface. If you notice the picture above, the area that is signified by the white corner brackets is the active area you can draw on... but... but.. what is all that extra black space for then??? :(
• Those awesome customization buttons.. are not that easy to push. In fact, you pretty much have to stab them with your finger to get them to click. At this point, I'd rather use my keyboard hotkeys because it just seems easier quicker, despite the reach.
• Tablet goes crazy when not using it. I have to keep my tablet far from my keyboard whenever I'm not using it, because the slight touch of my arm on it while typing activates the touch screen to do... well.. things I don't want it to do. 

Well, that's sums it up. You can get one between $300-350, depending on what size you want.

Visit the Wacom Site for Intuos5!!!