Warning: I didn’t include or consider the specs and fancy numbers, you can Google it and find it on Wacom’s official site. Most of what’s written is from my first hand experience. It’s pretty much my opinion so pls no so much hate if you disagree.

Intuos Art Review!

A couple of days ago I saw the release of the new line of Wacom tablets that are to replace the now old Intuos Pen (CTL-480) tablets. So happened right the day after my sister bought the tablet. So yay! A review.

First impressions:

Oh gosh this is a beautiful tablet. It’s basically the better version of everything I could imagine that the CTL-480 could be. I remember distinctively how I thought to myself “If only the white part of that tablet was black, it’d look so much better.” Boom, now we have a super sleek looking Intuos Art. It even comes in other colours and still retain its elegance.

Review:

One of the first things I noticed on this tablet is the size, it’s smaller than the CTL-480, but the tablet area is the same, so no worries there. The size might even help with the portability.

Second, the buttons on the tablet has been improved. Instead of feeling like they’d break when I put too much force when I click it, it feels a lot more comfortable and enjoyable to press. The indent feeling in the buttons is shaped to your fingertips so it’s a lot nicer too, unlike the flatness of the CTL-480’s buttons.

Thirdly, the surface of the tablet is rougher. As in the parts that isn’t the drawing surface. The plastic is those rougher types that wouldn’t leave fingerprints like the plastic on the black top of the CTL-480.

The drawing surface feels the same as it’s predecessor when you touch it, but drawing on it with a pen feels different. On CTL-480, the surface (to me), feels like writing on paper, which is what shocked me when I first used it. I had used another tablet before (Genius MousePen. Sounds stupid but hey man I got a new tablet for a reason) and it never felt so paper like or rough in a nice way. However, the Intuos Art feels a lot smoother than CTL-480, it’s not as rough but not that smooth either. Maybe because it’s more plastic-plastic now? I don’t know. But it doesn’t feel as obviously plastic as my first cheap tablet, so it’s not too bad either.

I generally found drawing on the tablet quite enjoyable, maybe even better than my CTL-480 (maybe it’s because I don’t feel like I’m sawing off my nib all the time due to the roughness?). But one problem I encountered is that the tablet freezes or lags at sometimes when I used it to draw on Photoshop CC on a Macbook. I don’t know the cause of it yet but I have yet to test of this problem on a Windows computer. It doesn’t seem to happen on the Mac when I’m not intensely trying to draw lines.

I usually tap when I jump when I play osu! the smoothness makes it harder to stop completely when I tap sometimes even when I change to a new nib on my CTL-480, Intuos Art would be even worse, but it isn’t that bad though. It shouldn’t be a huge problem to most osu! players because mostly everyone hovers, even if they drag, their nibs probably won’t die out as fast as if they were to drag on a CTL-480.

One of the other bigger differences between the two tablets is the back cover. For Intuos Art, the whole top part of the tablet is the cover, while on CTL-480 it’s only the small middle section. Being smaller, the cover for CTL-480 is easier to remove.

The back of Intuos Art houses more things, other than the usual extra 3 nibs, that hole that helps you remove the nib from your pen etc. This time instead of leaving you to wonder what’s going on, there are indented instructions on the surface to point you where to go and what to do. It’s extremely helpful for people who have no idea how/too lazy to use Google to find out what they are or how to do what. The ‘design’ might be cute to a few, or may be a pain to others for the waste of aesthetics for permanent helplines there in a handwriting font.

The other things in the back is a space for you to install a component to make your tablet wireless. Great for general aesthetics. The downer is that it is sold separately. However, as an osu! player, going wireless would welcome a very small input lag, not exactly the best thing you’d want. Though it might be minimal, but don’t take my word since I haven’t actually bought the extra wireless kit.

Another plus to the new Intuos is the rubber stoppers at the back. Kiss the weird plastic dots at the back of your old Intuos that don’t really work goodbye and welcome real rubber that wouldn’t cause your tablet to slide off a glass table.

The downsides of Intuos Art:

The tablet feels very cheap. The light weight and smaller size may be a plus, but it seems that Wacom is trying to cut cost. Taking out the back cover is a huge pain because it feels like one wrong move would shatter the tablet or the small plastic joints. It probably will, because applying light force in attempt to bend the tablet actually causes it to BEND. Like holy shit, IT BENDS. It’s absolutely horrific how I’m not even putting half effort into trying to bend the tablet and it bends slightly. Cheap material, but it’s to be expected when it’s only $30 more of the original price of CTL-480 but comes with touch response, Corel Painter and all the other new things this tablet brings.

Grand conclusion: Should you faster grab the last few CTL-480 models left? Or buy the new Intuos?

I don’t have any real answer when it comes to osu! playing. As long as you have a tablet. The hover distance is about the same too. Going with the new Intuos would be recommended because of the rubber stoppings underneath it but please do not expose your tablet to insane shock when you rage, it may actually break. Intuos Art might also be pretty good if you’re a complete drag or hover player because of the smooth surface not disturbing you much at all. However, I recommend you go with the old CTL-480 if you want the durability and the rougher(?) surface. The only other problem I can think of from getting that model other than missing out the other things it doesn’t have than the Intuos Art is finding the right driver that wouldn’t decrease so much input lag it would make playing impossible.

Intuos Art is a nice tablet worth the price, but the quality has been sacrificed because of it.