Wacom Cintiq 12WX Review

[tirediron]

A couple of weeks ago, my venerable old Wacom Graphire tablet died as a result of an accidentally severed USB cable. As a replacement I purchased a Wacom Cintiq 12WX 'edit on screen' tablet. In case anyone is interested here are my impressions.

First of all, like all Wacom products, it appeared very well made, and had a nice, solid feel to it. It even had real metal in it! Installation was a breeze on my XP SP2 system, and in about ten minutes, I was up and running with a dual-eye system. The screen itself while not quite as glossy as some, rendered colour very accurately, and was tack-sharp.

Editing directly on screen is a thing of beauty, and made using such things as the Control Points in Capture NX and other NiK software a breeze. It was also great for things like cloning and selective colouration. In short, made post-processing, which I have always viewed as something of a chore, a lot of fun. At $1100 (Current sale at London Drugs) it's pricey, but it does deliver.

Now, onto the less glowing part of the review. Like all of the Wacom professional line, it comes with a number of customizable buttons on the tablet face to eliminate the need for a keyboard; unfortunately, you cannot map 'Alt' to any of these keys, which means if I want to use the Clone or many other tools, I need to keep a keyboard handy. As well, while there's only one cable coming into the tablet, it goes to a box about 4x4x1" into which the video and USB cable from the computer feed, and the power cable from the wall; all in all, a rather tangled mess. Lastly, and what was the deal-breaker for me, was the fact that you have to (and this is repeated in large-print, bold font in the directions several times) power off the computer to connect and disconnect the tablet.

The cabling and connection issues likely won't be an issue for someone who has a permanently set up editing station, or even just a regular desk-top computer where they can move it out of the way when not required, but as I am a laptop person, it was too much. Overall, it's a great piece of gear, and if you can afford it, and use a desk-top computer for your editing, I would recommend it highly, with the caveat that the inability to map the 'Alt' key to it's custom buttons is an odd, and VERY annoying oversight for a company like Wacom.

Alas it went back to the store yesterday and I came home with a plain old Intuous 3 (6x11).

[Marko]

Thanks for the review - I too have an Intuous 3 wacom tablet that I love and have always been intrigued by the Cintiq.