It’s a couple of months since we spotted paperwork for a secret “PTK-450” device at the FCC and now Wacom has finally revealed the gadget that goes with the label.
The Intuos5 tablet is available to purchase immediately in Small (4 x 6 inches), Medium (6 x 8) and Large (13 x 8) sizes. We’re still waiting on confirmation of US pricing, but it’ll no doubt be less than what a straight currency conversion suggests. There’s a fourth variant to add to the trio, but it’s not an XL — Wacom is hoping to up-sell you to a Cintiq 21UX or Cintiq 24HD if you want something bigger. Instead, the fourth tablet is a version of the Medium that comes without touch sensitivity, bringing the price down to £270 if you’re able to live with pen-only input. Opting for this particular model will remove one of the biggest upgrades in this three-year product cycle: the ability of the Intuos5 to sense up to 16 finger-touches simultaneously, rather than just the nib of the pen. But there have been other revisions since the Intuos4 aside from touch, and you only have to read on to discover what those are.
Update: There was a problem with the embedded video — sorry folks. It’s working properly now, along with more gallery pics below.
Update: Just got word on US pricing. For the touch sensitive models. For the Medium without touch. Also coming to the US is a pen-only version of the Small tablet — we’re not sure how much that’ll cost (and Wacom’s site seems to be down right now), but it’ll be the lowest upgrade of the bunch.
- LGs Black Label BL40
- Nikon D300s
- Pinguinphone
Wacom has kept a firm grip on backwards compatibility, keeping the same 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity and allowing Intuos4 and Cintiq pens to work fine with the Intuos5. To make things simple, however, touch sensitivity is disabled when the pen comes close to the tablet, such that input is either by pen or by touch but never both at the same time.
When inputting with touch, the hardware is capable of registering 16 separate points, but Wacom’s software currently only recognizes up to five-finger gestures. These gestures can be assigned to keyboard functions from the Intuos settings pane, which means you won’t be dependent on Adobe or anyone else implementing multi-touch directly into their programs — and indeed, we hear that multi-touch probably isn’t coming to Photoshop any time soon. Nevertheless, when the big photo and graphics titles eventually find clever things to do with ten fingers and six toes, the Intuos5 will be good and ready.
It’s not clear where the OLEDs have gone from the Intuos4, but hopefully it’s somewhere nice. In their stead, Wacom has shifted almost every aspect of the tablet’s ability to display information to an on-screen “HUD,” which is designed to prevent you from ever having to look away from the screen, even for a split second, regardless of what that workspace safety adviser told you.
