image courtesy of Gearlog

Gearlog [ http://gearlog.com/ ] has a great hands-on look at one of the best Wacom tablets to come out yet; the Cintiq 21UX- a Wacom tablet that doubles as an LCD display that is touch and pressure sensitive, so you can take the stylus that comes with it and draw right on the screen! The review is thorough and complete, and Terry Sullivan, who writes the review for Gearlog, points out the Cintiq’s good and bad points. Wacom has been making pen tablets for years, with touch and pressure sensitive pads that respond to the included stylus that has a variety of buttons and functions on it, and their products have long been the favorites of many a graphic designer and professtional (and unprofessional!) artist.

Aside from the Cintiq being every graphic designer’s dream by combining a touch and pressure sensitive pad and stylus with the actual screen that one would be drawing on (a beautiful 21.3 inch LCD, at that!), the product provides new features like being able to tilt the pen in diferent directions for new effects, and intutitive preferences and menus that let you spend less time fiddling with the prefs to make sure its working right and more time immersing yourself in the function and feel of what I think will quickly become standard in design studios and graphic houses in the coming years.

Put down your credit card though, the Cintiq is about $2400 USD, and while it’s available now, it’s definitely not for the casual designer who can get away with spending a fraction for one of Wacom’s more standard tablet/pen packages. This tool is aimed at the serious designer or design professional, but for those folks who can afford it and use it, it’s definitely a must-have. Check out Sullivan’s review (along with more pretty pictures) linked below.

[ Gearlog :: Hands On: A Portrait of the Wacom Cintiq 21UX ]