Just as the Multi-Touch buzz was catching on, what with Apple’s entire lineup of user input methods going Multi-Touch, Wacom decided it was best to introduce a Multi-Touch tablet into the market. Okay I’m sure they were working on this for a while, but you can’t help but notice the timing. Considering my Wacom tablet is currently out of service (long story), I was pretty excited about the prospects of getting one of these babies. After all, why not, it’s got the best of both worlds!
The package arrived via courier, and I was so excited I actually tripped and fell flat on the floor while running into the house. Yes, I protected the box hurting my elbow in the bargain.
More pics on Flickr
The beautiful design instantly made me clean up my desk, making sure everything was spotless. Compared to my Bamboo Fun 5x9 tablet (2007), this one’s kind of small—compact, if you will. The physical dimensions are 9.8 by 6.9 inch, which is about an inch narrower than the Apple keyboard. The ‘active area’ 5.8 by 3.6 inch for Pen, and 4.9 by 3.4 inch for Touch.
Plugged the tablet in, and was off to install the included software. The tutorial is fairly comprehensive; although I skipped much of it. And you don’t even have to restart!
The Bamboo Multi Touch
The Bamboo combines the Pen and touch input in a seamless experience. When the pen is brought close to the tablet, the white LED turns white, as the touch turns off so it doesn’t pick up spurious inputs when you’re resting your hands. And it works without a hitch (at least technically it does).
As for touch, think of the Bamboo as a giant trackpad which supports two finger gestures. It’s for the two finger right-click, scrolling and panning, pinch to zoom, rotate, and swiping back and forth. And these gestures are exactly the same as the MacBook trackpads. Needless to say, from a demo point of view, everything works just right.
But, in usage, the experience is quite disappointing. Let me take it from the top. The trackpad is nowhere near as comfortable as the smooth MacBooks. It’s jittery, sticky, and the coefficient of friction is nowhere near that of the plastic MacBook trackpads—you can forget about comparing it with the newer glass ones. If you’ve used a cheap Compaq or Acer notebook lately, you know what I’m talking about. Moreover, the ‘tap’ to select or click, is slightly delayed, presumably as the device tries to figure out what it is you’re doing. Bugs me no end. To make matters worse, it’s not even good at detecting a tap from a move, randomly selecting windows as you try to move the cursor. I’ve had trouble keeping icons in the dock, as they keep going “poof!”.
Third, the click button, is placed on the side of the active area, and not under as we’re used to on trackpads. This is painful for those click and drags as you’re forced to bring in the other arm instead of using the thumb to keep the selected item while dragging. Don’t tell me about double-tap-and-drag, I’ve never quite been comfortable with it especially with moving objects over long distances.
Scrolling is flawed. Wacom has tried to implement the same scroll-with-momentum we’ve seen on the iPhone and lately with the Magic Mouse. It feels unnatural, is slow, and gets quite unweildy. And there’s no way to turn that off. It also often confuses a scroll with a swipe, so if you go slightly off track while scrolling a web page, you end up switching the tab. Drives me nuts! The rest of the gestures I wouldn’t use on a regular basis so there’s no point in bringing them up. They do work though, and that’s good.
The Pen Input
As the industry leading company for pen tablet devices, I was sure they wouldn’t be able to screw up this aspect of the tablet. And thankfully, they didn’t. The pen is just as accurate as you’d expect it to be, and responds beautifully to position, pressure, and smoothness. In terms of specifics, its accuracy is close to +/- 0.2 in, and the pressure sensitivity has been bumped to 1024. Resolution is a large 2540 lpi, which means it should fit right in with your 27” iMac. The tracking area at 4.9 inch by 3.4 inch is slightly larger than Touch, as indicated by the white border.
The pen has got a switcher for allowing you to scroll (which surprisingly doesn’t have any momentum) or right click, both of which are really comfortable gestures. As always, it’s got an eraser tip for graphics apps that support it, something I’ve never used in my entire life. And lastly, they’ve gotten rid of the Pen holder, instead using a red nylon tab at the side which you can slide the pen in. Very nice.
One of the problems of using pen inputs while performing general operations on desktop, was that you couldn’t easily switch between ‘mousing’ and using your keyboard. There was always that little delay of placing the pen on the table, and moving to the table. You get used to it, but it’s still awkward. Wacom’s touch input seems to solve that, as it’s far easier not to pick up the pen and move the cursor with your finger, rather than use the otherwise supplied mouse on the trackpad. If you think of it as a replacement for the supplied mouse, the touch input makes perfect sense.
But that’s a perfect world scenario. Imagine you’re using the pen to control the mouse, and want to switch over to the keyboard. From the moment you lift your pen, to that travel to the keyboard, your resting palm causes some sort of gesture, leading to something weird happening on your screen. The reverse action also leads to unintended inputs. I didn’t notice this at first, but soon it got real annoying.
Wacom has made sure there’s an easy way to turn off the ‘touch’, as you can set one of the big programmable buttons on the side. Yes, those buttons are real easy to hit. I’m trying to get used to it, and I suppose one could get used to turning off the Touch while in extreme pen mode. Oddly, the white LED doesn’t turn orange when the Touch is disabled.
In a nutshell, the Pen input experience is top notch, as long as you consciously turn off the Touch input when doing graphics heavy work.
Two weeks with the Bamboo Touch
It’s a whiny review for sure, but it’s only because Wacom makes such good products. At the end of the day, the Bamboo Touch is not that bad. Wacom didn’t do anything ‘wrong’ with this effort. They just didn’t do anything mindblowing. I do hope Wacom can build upon this, and come up with a superior implementation of multi-touch for the desktop. Is Touch better than using the otherwise supplied kludgy Wacom mouse? Sure! But is it better than using a standalone mouse or the trackpad on your MacBook? There’s no way I’m giving up on getting a Magic Mouse, nor would I forgo using a MacBook trackpad.
As a Tablet user, I’d highly recommend one of the Wacoms, which are a joy to use not only for graphics work, but even for regular desktop operations. Just don’t buy the tablet because of the multi-touch, or replace your existing tablet because of the new Touch features.
Here’s a breakdown of what’s available on the Wacom Bamboo Touch lineup:
Bamboo Pen and Touch (CTH460): This is the one I’ve reviewed. Includes Pen and Touch, 4.9 x 3.4 inch touch input, 5.8 x 3.6 inch pen input, list price $100, Amazon price $85.
Bamboo Touch (CTT460): Same as the one I reviewed, minus the Pen input. List price $70, Amazon price $58. Please don’t go for this one.
Bamboo Pen (CTL460): Same as one I reviewed, minus the touch input. List price $70, Amazon price $58. Get this one if you’re on a budget.
Bamboo Fun (CTH661): Much larger than the 460, at 7.5 by 5.1 active area for Touch, and 8.5 by 5.4 inch tracking area for Pen. List price $200, Amazon price $167. If you’re even semi-serious about graphics work, the larger tracking area will definitely help.
