With the new side switch, I can quickly turn multi-touch on for when I’m using my hand to scroll through things like my Adobe Lightroom image library, and then quickly turn it off when I get down to detailed pen-based editing in Photoshop where it might cause some accidental gesture issues. With previous version of these tablets, enabling or disabling this feature meant diving into the settings menus in System Setting which meant that you never really wanted to switch it on and off and most likely just turned it off and left it like that. Multi-touch gestures similar to what you have on your phone have been available for some time on Wacom tablets, but I always found that there were certain situations where I didn’t want to have them enabled. This thing is a beautiful piece of design, and the stunning packaging makes for a great unboxing experience.Īnother small but appreciated design change is the inclusion of a multi-touch on/off switch on the side of the tablet.
I’ve owned two previous iterations of the Intuos Pro tablets, and this is the first one that actually caused “oooh” sounds to come out of my mouth when I unboxed it.
Gone is the full plastic case design from the previous Intuos Pro, the new 2017 Wacom Intuos Pro has a sturdy black anodized aluminum back panel, with a fiberglass composite resin shell on the front. From the moment you unpack the Apple-like packaging, you immediately sense a solidly built product that feels worth your investment. The overall build quality of the Wacom Intuos Pro is a nice step up from what it has been in the past. I’m sure this is something existing Wacom users are aware of, but new users who who are buying a tablet for the first time might expect it to be similar to something like the Apple Pencil, which does need charging. As before, the Pro Pen 2 doesn’t contain any batteries so it doesn’t need charging in any way. This new pen is four times more accurate and pressure sensitive compared with the original Pro Pen, with 8,192 sensitivity layers.
The third major update is the move to Pro Pen 2. If you have a newer Macbook or Macbook Pro that has USB-C ports on it, you can simply buy any USB-C to USB-C cable, or use a converter dongle. Currently the tablets ship with a USB-A to USB-C charging cable, which seems fair enough given the prevalence of USB-A connections on computer and hubs, for now.
There’s still a USB cable that needs to be used from time to time to charge the tablet, but the bluetooth wireless connection is extremely welcome! I was also pleased to see the inclusion of the latest USB-C port standard on the tablet, meaning you can insert it in any orientation, rather than the old micro-USB plugs that always seemed to be upside down the first time you try and plug it in. Previous versions of the tablet required you to use a USB WiFi dongle to wirelessly connect to the tablet, and this was frankly a pain in the ass when you’re also looking to connect things like hard drives and memory card readers to laptops that seem to have a decreasing number of USB ports on them (ahem…I’m looking at you, Apple). The second major update of note with this Intuos Pro is that they have finally moved to using bluetooth connectivity instead of WiFi.
I really can’t see many people doing that for the kind of application that a tablet is designed for. To be honest though, the medium-sized tablet is roughly the size of a 13” laptop so if portability is your main concern, you’d need to be using a very small laptop for this to have an effect on how you travel. If you really need something smaller than the Intuos Pro Medium, then you can always take a look at the cheaper Intuos lineup. This is awesome, and it’s the reason that Wacom have now phased out the small sized tablet entirely. The result is that the medium-sized version of the tablet is the same physical size as the older small-sized one, but the size of the active drawing area has not changed. The actual drawing area on the tablets has not changed, but the border around the edge of the active area and buttons is much thinner. With the physical design changes in this latest update, the relative physical sizing of these tablets has shrunk considerably when compared to the previous iterations. The first thing to note is that the Intuos Pro tablets are now only available in two sizes: Medium and Large. This update to the popular pen tablet comes with some significant changes, so even if you’re an owner of a previous model (as I am), you’ll want to take a look at this review. Over the years, Wacom have flip-flopped around a little with the naming scheme for these tablets, which is why I have chosen to specifically mention the 2017 launch date in the title and review. In this review we’re going to be taking a look at the 2017 version of the Wacom Intuos Pro pen tablet.