Intuous5 Touch Professional Pen Tablet Review (PTH-650-EN)

1. Introduction2. Specifications and Overview3. Packaging4. The Tablet and Operation5. Closing Thoughts6. View All Pages

As soon as you are hooked up lights on the surface of the tablet light up showing the area of the screen, and what function the scroll wheel is set to. These are subtle and non intrusive.

The 8 programmable ExpressKeys are set above and below the programmable wheel.  All can be programmed, but are chiefly designed to be used for scrolling, or as quick keys in graphics packages. It would be good to have more of these keys.  You soon run out of programmable options when using heavy graphics packages.

The tablet does not take up a huge amount of space, bearing in mind that it is the equivalent width of our 27” iMac (or whatever size screen you are using).  This is a pleasant surprise as it does not feel imposing or intrusive on the desk. It just sort of, well, fits.

Each long edge of the tablet is nicely curved. Your wrist has no edges to cause discomfort. Far less occurrences of RSI, in comparison to a mouse, spring to mind.

For a leftie, the USB lead has a nice little touch. A clip for the lead ensures it stays in the direction of your computer if using the tablet the “wrong” way round! However, having a wire for a device is old hat today. The RF wireless kit should be built in rather than being an accessory.

A battery is also not included. This is another major oversight. I tire of buying devices only to have to buy accessories that are fundamental to the use of a device post purchase! For the security conscious there is a tether point to which a security cable (purchased separately) can be fitted.

Underneath the tablet there are soft pads that ensure the tablet stays put.

The pen is quite light. It bulges towards the nib, giving considerable grip. I can imagine that one size may not fit all in this regard, and smaller hands may find this grip a little to large and cumbersome. Different grips can be purchased but nothing smaller.

The pen comes with a nib fitted and it also hosts a rocker type button.  These act as a right click, and double click respectively.  The use of these buttons is the hardest thing to adapt too.  You can click them accidentally.  The pen also has a cushioned “eraser” on its head.

The response of the tablet is extremely fast.  The benchmark for us was using it with Sketch Book Pro.  Drawing and pressure, when applied to the pen, made the pencil on screen change in shade immediately without any noticeable time lag.

When using the tablet as a replacement for a mouse, when searching the web, we soon got used to the positioning of the pen and the adaptation process was far quicker than we had envisaged.

The packaging is robust, ensuring that you get the device in one piece.  The look of the tablet, as the pictures below show, is very attractive, yet unobtrusive.

This tablet is a far cry from the small “bamboo” tablets that we have used in the past (a tablet that had put us off from ever using one ever again as the smaller cheap affairs are sheer purgatory to use!). The tablet works extremely well with the standard graphics packages. It is up and running within minutes. The driver software has to be downloaded, but this is a reasonably quick process.

Being a typical male who does not read instructions, I found the tablet easy to get to know and use. Having the basic functionality of a trackpad is also a stroke of genius. Where the pen leaves off, the trackpad functions take over.

The three fingered tap brings up a circular menu with basics such as save, tab, move forward etc… that makes access to everyday functions readily accessible.

The rocker button on the pen is pointless. You will find yourself trolling through the online pdf manual working out the double click and right click on the tablet and ditch the buttons on the pen! The buttons on the pen get in the way and are too easy to click, especially when picking up the pen. You need to position the pen with the rocker type button to the front to avoid accidentally clicking one of the buttons. This function could be dropped from the pen.

The tablet can also be “mapped” to a mouse function, which I experimented with. This is an utterly pointless function and it is best avoided. Why spend money on a tablet and then turn it into a glorified mouse?

Obviously the primary purpose of the tablet is to use it with graphics heavy programmes. It would be a waste to deploy this as a pseudo mouse. If that is what you require then stick to a trackpad only.

When using the tablet and pen with any graphics package it becomes a whole new ball game regarding accuracy and fluidity. All of the graphical work functions suddenly become far easier and the accuracy of +/- 0.01” and the lpi resolution of 5080 really starts to show.

The flow across the work area of 48.4” square is a doddle to achieve. When using a decent sized screen, such as a 27” iMac with this tablet, I can easily sweep across the entire screen in one fluid movement with the pen across the tablet without lifting my hand. It soon becomes apparent that this is a far cry from the clunky nature of a mouse and it is so much more accurate.

To get used to this tablet you need to forget using the pen as you would a mouse. There is no dragging the cursor across the screen by keeping the pen in touch with the tablet, it is simply move the pen to the position required and tap.

Once used to the differences of using a tablet the device becomes a far more logical instrument to employ than a mouse in every regard. In the ten days or so of using the tablet I have touched my mouse about three times.

Despite all of the plus points, one of the few drawbacks is the angle of the pen. In art college I tended to use pens, pencils and brushes at quite an acute angle to the paper. This is just a preference of mine, and of many artists. This is not possible with this device as there is not that much tolerance. Use the pen at too sharp an angle and icons start to be pushed across the screen, or your brush strokes become inaccurate. When drawing it sometimes feels unnatural to hold a “pencil”, “paintbrush” at such an obtuse angle. Naturally I want to have the pen at a far more acute angle, far less upright than is required. This will also take some getting used to for many artists who decide to embark upon digital art.

I also found that one piece of software, my accounts package Easy Books, did not appear to like the tablet and I have had to resort to using the mouse with this particular package. All other software that I have tried the tablet with work no problem.

As I said earlier, the low budget tablets that I have used in the past, and having used equivalent packages with pens on my iPad without success, all put me off ever using any of these devices. Having been there, at the launch of the very first commercially available optical mouse, that I thought to be a revolution at the time, I can see that this particular device is a cut above anything that I have ever used before and comes highly recommended, especially if you are into graphics even in a small way.

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