Wacom Intuos Pro Creative Pen Tablet: For Both Pros And Amateurs

The Wacom Intuos Pro Creative Pen Tablet is a graphics tablet with a writing surface but no screen. It’s responsive to an included pen stylus and to gesture-based finger commands.

- Tony Hoffman And Jose Ruiz

Your gestures and pen strokes are mapped to your computer’s screen or monitor, so you can draw, edit photos, and perform other actions and see the results almost immediately. It comes in small ($249.95), medium ($379.95), and large ($499.95). We tested the small version (model PTH460), which proves itself an inexpensive, highly portable device for artists, photographers, and designers. It’s a good choice as a graphics tablet for use with a laptop, especially when your working space may be at a premium.

WRITE ON

The Wacom Intuos Pro Small is a matte-black rectangle with rounded corners. It measures 0.3 by 10.6 by 6.7 inches (HWD) and is very similar in dimensions to my 9.7-inch, sixth-generation Apple iPad.

The tablet’s active area, which is bounded at four corners marked by right-angle white hash-marks, measures 6.3 by 4 inches. This bounded area is mapped to your computer screen. Hover the pen over the active area’s lower right corner, for instance, and your cursor will appear in that corner.

To the left of the active area is a column of six programmable ExpressKey buttons. One opens a Settings diagram, showing the ExpressKey Settings (what function each is mapped to), as well as Pen Properties and Touch Properties. When used with the pen, clicking on the buttons marked ExpressKey Properties, Pen Properties, or Touch Properties takes you to a dialog box that lets you reprogram the keys or pen, alter the feel and tilt sensitivity of the pen, and change other settings.

Another ExpressKey takes you to the Wacom Desktop Center, which keeps track of your Wacom devices, lets you access a wide range of settings, and links to the Wacom Store. The other ExpressKeys are by default mapped to Shift, Ctrl, Alt, and Pan/Scroll to facilitate navigation.