Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program I've used Wacom tablets for years, from the low end to the best they offer. When I had the chance to test this "fun" tablet I expected it to be rather basic. But it's actually quite impressive. For one thing, this can be used by both rightand left-handed users. I installed it on my Mac (OS Lion) with ease, and setup was a cinch. I'm used to Wacom's features, though, so I deliberately approached this as if I were a new user, and I was pleased that fine-tuning the functions and specs is quite simple. It's impressive how many ways you can engineer this tablet to work for you: you can designate myriad functions for each button, as well as the sensitivity of the pen tip and eraser.
I ran this in Photoshop CS5 and found that is assimilates perfectly as a drawing tool--new users who are considering this shouldn't be the slightest bit concerned that incorporating a tablet into their Photoshop, Corel, etc. apps will be buggy or requires lots of advanced setup. Nope, it works just how you hope it will. (New users should be prepared for the "weird" sensation of drawing on a tablet while looking at a screen; a pen is not a mouse, and you can't lift and reposition it while maintaining stationary cursor placement like a mouse. The tablet is the equivalent to your screen. Advanced tablet users know all of this.)
This tablet isn't as sensitive as Wacom's more elite models; it detects 1,024 levels of pressure which is VERY good for nearly any use, but the higher-end tablets support up to twice that. I'm an artist, though, and to be honest I haven't yet found the case where the difference has been critical. The tablet is lightweight and easy to hold or carry. The surface is a glassy-feeling plastic that feels natural; one criticism would be that it sense the pen too easily sometimes, so trying to carefully place the pen slowly to the surface might result in a "misfire" when the tablet reads it as intended pen action too soon.
For fun, there are a few games that come with it, but they're not impressive. Doodle on a world map; draw on the Mona Lisa; use the pen to play a rudimentary physics game...meh. Let's be honest: this is a "fun" tablet, but the games aren't actually why you'd want this. At the root of it, this is a tablet for people who want to do things a tablet will let them do (draw, design, and place design items) at a much more affordable price than the higher-end tablets. And once we settle on that, this does just fine. For those who want to do all of these things but don't have full-blown Photoshop, never fear--this includes Adobe "elements" (which does what most peopel need Photoshop to do, without the fancy extras), Corel Painter Essentials, and Autodesk Sketchbook Express. Between each of these, you have a fantastic range of filters, tools, and effects that work extremely well. I haven't had a single bug yet in Mac, and I've run this in Parallels 7 Windows XP on my Mac with fine results there, too. Be careful not to rely on writing-to-text, though; even though the tablet claims to offer this feature, it's not exactly accurate.
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