Review on Renewed Wacom Intuos Pro Medium Creative Pen Tablet PTH660 - Shop Now! by Anastazja Jelisiejew ᠌

Name: Renewed Wacom Intuos Pro Medium Creative Pen Tablet PTH660 - Shop Now!
Item: Renewed Wacom Intuos Pro Medium Creative Pen Tablet PTH660 - Shop Now!
Rating: 3

December 12, 2022

Nothing special, there are positives and negatives.

Of the other nuances, it can be noted that the charge lasts a long time, but it also charges longer than we would like. Bluetooth connection is quite normal. Unlike the ExpressKey keys, the buttons responsible for turning the device on / off and the touch functions are quite good, but for some reason they are located on the side of the ExpressKey keys where the palm literally rests on them (if you hold the tablet in your hand and not on the table). It would be better to place them on the opposite side as before.

In general, this tablet is not very impressive, unfortunately it takes one step forward and two steps back. I'm writing this review based on my experience with other Wacom Intuos tablets and actively comparing this one with those, but if you're buying the Intuos Pro 2022 as your first tablet, chances are it won't disappoint (unless the buttons are defective).

Pros

Nice weight and size, compared to the Intuos Pro 2022, the Medium size is the same as the Small size of that line, but the active surface is about the same. It weighs a quarter less than the previous medium, despite the fact that the body is now metal and the rubber feet are quite solid. - With merit, perhaps everything. Since there are quite a lot of shortcomings, they do not fit into the limit of characters of one field, therefore their description begins here, in the advantages, and continues further in the field of disadvantages. - LIMITATIONS All buttons are made very badly, of all the Intuos that have come out over the past 20 years, this one has the worst buttons. Pressing is very ruminant in sensations, the depth is so small that it is barely felt and almost everyone presses in different ways. That is, one is louder, the other is deeper, the third can generally be pressed as if it has a strongly shifted center and one half of the button is pressed and the second is static, or even not even a whole half is pressed, but only one corner. I did not think that it would be so bad after the previous Intuos Pro, which has the most pleasant buttons of all. Fortunately, Wacom changed my tablet, but even the second one has almost the same problems, except that the center of the buttons is now smoother. The new Pro Pen 2 also has a vague feel from the buttons, I prefer to use the old Grip Pen since it is compatible with the new tablet. The Pro Pen 2 does not bring anything radically new, on the contrary, I have much less control over the pressing force with it than before, the lines with the old stylus come out smoother at the same settings. In general, when switching from the old Intuos Pro to the new one, the impressions are worse even with the old pen, I had to reconfigure both the illustration software and the drivers. The drivers themselves are not very stable 3 years after the release, then the handle falls off, then the settings are lost. Without a full installation of the drivers, this tablet does not work at all, the previous one could simply be plugged in and it would immediately work without support for pressure levels. But in general, there is less fuss with drivers than on the previous Intuos.

Cons

The rough surface is still annoying with excessive noise and rudeness. She does not imitate paper, as supposedly intended, she imitates sandpaper. It used to erase nibs in a matter of days, now even faster when Wacom switched to softer plastics. And if before the tip was thicker and longer, which extended its life, now they have completely different sizes and I can’t even use the tips from old pens. When I had an Intuos3 with a smooth surface, I never needed to change nibs, later they were even compatible with the Intuos5/Pro pen. Replacement costs a lot of money, like all Wacom products. They know that customers don't like roughness, so they sell the smoother covers separately instead of releasing their tablets with it right off the bat. Of course, you can weaken the sensitivity of the pen in the settings so that it erases more slowly, but then what is the point of these vaunted 8000+ pressure levels if even without weakening the difference between 2022 levels of the old pen and the new one is practically not felt? The active area of the tablet has changed not for the better. Older tablets already had a sub-optimal aspect ratio of the active area, monitors with 16:9 screens typically had an excess of vertical space, the Intuos5 / Pro had about 1 cm. Now it's even worse, the horizontal side was reduced by 0.5 cm, while adding 1 cm to the vertical side, where there was already an excess. The percentage of the unused part of the core has become even larger and the total area of the zone has become smaller. This, of course, if you activate the Force Proportions parameter in the settings, which carefully adjusts the ratio of the active area to the screen. If you do not turn it on, then you can use the entire zone, but who needs it if in this situation you draw circles and ovals appear on the monitor? Why Wacom still doesn't make a 16:9 area ratio is anyone's guess. It’s also a shame that the zone is no longer illuminated by LED corners, a trifle of course, but it was convenient in the dark.