These all give a different feel to writing or drawing, and include pen, stroke, hard felt and flex nib varieties.
Ten nibs are included, which with the one pre-installed in the pen makes for a total of eleven. Storing the nibs in the pen-base is an inspired idea, one of the many incidental touches that elevate the Intuos 4 above its predecessor. It’s taller and heavier than before, and its glossy base unscrews from the hollow top section to reveal a foam holding area for all your nibs and a compact metal nib-extractor. Wacom has cleverly designed the stand to be more than just a pen-holder like it was for the Intuos 3. Also, both the nibs and the eraser at the pen’s top now feel softer, giving better resistance and making them feel more like the real thing. The nib now only requires a single gram of pressure to register an action compared to the previous pen’s 10, so an even finer touch than before is possible. Pens from the Intuos 3 won’t work with the newer tablet, but rather than a way of making you pay all over again for the large variety of pens the company offers (including Grip, Airbrush, Inking and Art models), it’s because they have received a genuine hardware upgrade inside too, doubling the Intuos 3 pen’s 1,024 levels of pressure sensitivity to a heady 2,048. Wacom’s unique ‘Penabled’ technology means the pen never requires batteries, and its build quality is excellent. Its action remains flawless however, with a nice click to confirm presses. The two-way rocker switch near its base sticks out less too, so it’s not as easy to press the lower ‘button’ accidentally while working. Its whole length is now soft-touch instead of just the lower part on its predecessor (though the lower rubber ‘grip’ is still replaceable), which combines with a shorter and slightly fatter body to make it more comfortable to hold. To go with the new look the pen feels different, too. Gone is the blue and grey colour scheme that adorned all but the special edition Intuos 3 tablets, to be replaced with a mixture of satin and gloss black that makes it look and feel like an even more premium product.
The first thing some might notice is that the set has received a visual make-over. The Intuos 4 package consists of the pen and tablet, USB cable, pen-holder and driver CD. Nearly all tablets are pressure-sensitive so you can vary the width, opacity or jitter (etc) of your lines, and Wacom’s pens uniquely offer 60 degrees of tilt sensitivity too. Of course it doesn’t appear on the tablet (unless you have a Cintiq), so it takes a bit of getting used to, but once you have the hang of coordinating your hand to the screen you’ll never want to go back to a mouse for drawing or detailed photo-editing. You use a digital pen to draw upon it, and what you draw appears on your screen. Essentially, it’s like a piece of very thick digital paper. Though Cintiqs are still the most expensive of Wacom’s offerings, in fact the Intuos 4 is the best-specified tablet out of the lot because the Cintiqs are still based around the same architecture as the Intuos 3 was.īefore we get onto the upgrades and changes Wacom has implemented in its fourth Intuos tablet, let’s quickly go over just what a graphics tablet does and what it’s for. The Intuos currently sits near the top of Wacom’s range, which starts with the Bamboo for casual users, offers the Graphire for those who want wireless, and culminates with the Cintiq which combines a tablet and LCD monitor into a single device.