Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsThe longer I use it the worse it gets
Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2017
Just wanted to re-write my review for this little bugger, since my opinion of it has significantly changed over the last 6 months.
The longer I use it now a huge (4-5 square inches) area of the screen is becoming continually more permanently discolored, right in the middle of my drawing area. This is also the second one of these that I've had and both have had significant issues; the first one wouldn't turn on at all, and (read for more info below) the second one took me more than a month of constant calls to Wacom to even receive it in the first place.
I'm really starting to suspect that many of the issues with the device are because of Microsoft and their incessant need to (very badly) micormanage every aspect of a user's PC. Drivers seem to mostly work, but I can't remember the last time I got through a day without Windows Update taking up half the computer cycles, and if not Windows Update then it is their infuriating background antimalware service, which seems to have lost the option to tell it to stop hogging the CPU when I'm in the middle of working. Photoshop routinely freezes while I'm in the middle of work for no other reason than that Windows 10 decided it needed to babysit me and make sure none of those scary computer cycles are available for me to use on my computer. Regardless of how I as a customer feel about it, these issues are not necessarily the fault of Wacom since they're terrible decisions being made by a group of monkeys over at Microsoft, however Wacom is slow and notoriously bad at supporting their customers or alleviating the issues that they do have control over.
Let's just say there are a lot of problems I could deal with on an artist tablet, but with a huge discolored area of pixels and near-constant input and display issues, my love affair with this tablet, and Wacom in general, is well and truly over. I will DEFINITELY select from Wacom's growing list of competitors in the future. I tend to be very forgiving of technical and customer service issues, but Wacom seems to be in a class of it's own.
**read below for part of my original review in January 2016**
And woe betide you if you have some kind of issue and you have to deal with Wacom's customer service. Through a series of unfortunate events I ended up ordering one of these devices directly through Wacom and not, as I should have done, through Amazon. After 4 long weeks of calls to Wacom and their general unhelpfulness, they finally sent me the tablet, which had been severely damaged in shipping, and the processor fan was loose and buzzing.
I informed tech support right away, but it still took 2 more weeks of me calling to bother them to finally receive an RMA to return the device. If you don't end up having to contact Wacom tech support though, you should have relatively smooth sailing.
I did through the course of things order and receive another one through Adorama Camera and had none of the issues that I had when dealing directly with Wacom, so in general my advice would definitely be to order through a third party and not directly from Wacom.
Some things I wish I'd known about the device beforehand (though they don't necessarily change my opinion of it much); the tablet itself charges with one of the USB-C ports, so if you are plugged-in you will only have 2 ports available. Since I am using both a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, I rarely have anything now that needs to be connected through the USB, except sometimes an adapter for my thumb drive. I would not have otherwise chosen to move towards USB-C on my own yet, but I think it will become easier to deal with as the technology becomes more ubiquitous. The slot for the SD card is definitely going to come in handy, since now 512 GB SD cards are pretty readily available (and even 1 TB cards soon) so there is actually some room to expand your space if you are the type of person like me who ends up using a lot of memory.
So TL;DR: the tablet is the best of the best, once you've got it in your hands and it's working.
