Wacom Bamboo Touch Tablet Review
Based on a post last Thursday by a user who was able to find the new Wacom Bamboo Touch Tablet (Model: CTT-460) at his local Best Buy, I took a chance and visited my local store. There was no sign of it with the other Wacom tablets, but I asked a friendly salesperson who looked it up on the computer, and said they seemed to have one in stock. He went to the storeroom, but came out and said it was on the "new items" end-cap, which, in my store, was kind of out of the way. In any case, the one was there, and I scored! (I guess I might have given him the only hug he will get all day!) It is not yet on the Wacom site or the Best Buy site, but it is really out!
The Wacom Bamboo Touch Tablet is a USB tablet that can act as a mouse, a multitouch trackpad, and a small drawing tablet. I installed it on both a Macintosh (Snow Leopard on an iMac) and a Windows machine (Toshiba laptop with Vista Home Basic).
The Bamboo touch is 8" x 5.5" in size and the input area is 5.5" x 3.25", with the four "ExpressKey" buttons located outside of the input area. These ExpressKeys are configurable for various functions as most input device buttons are.
You simply start the software install, pick right- or left-hand orientation, and then plug in the Bamboo Touch to complete the installation. It shows up, after the install, in the System Preferences and Control Panel panes as "Bamboo" and you can set the pointer speed, double-tap speed, etc.
There is a nice tutorial on the CD which illustrates and explains all the multi-touch features. The full user guide is also downloaded to your computer in PDF format.
Here are a few screenshots from the manual, illustrating the capabilities of the Bamboo. (Click on the thumbnail to enlarge it.
How well does it work?
Let me start out by saying I am not a mouse user-- I use a trackball on my desktops and the built-in trackpad on the laptops. I also do not take advantage of all the whiz-bang features of the MacbookPro multitouch trackpad on a regular basis.
However, I did put the Wacom Bamboo Touch Tablet through its paces on both the Apple and the Windows machines, and all of the multitouch features worked great! I also opened Adobe Photoshop and used the Bamboo touch both as a mouse and as a drawing tool. I could navigate and "fingerpaint" with no problem, but I would still choose to use my Wacom Graphire for serious drawing. My finger is not half as steady as my hand with a drawing pen is.
I am going to replace my trackball on my iMac at work with the Wacom Bamboo Touch Tablet, locate it in front of the keyboard, and use it as my mouse. As well as adhering to the sound ergonomic principle of having the input device as close as possible to the middle of your body, so there is no stretching going on, I now also will have the multitouch features available on the Mac and Windows side of my desktop! I plan to take advantage of those swiping, panning, rotating, and the other whiz-bang features!
Labels: Kathy Schrock, Wacom Bamboo Touch Tablet
posted by Kathy Schrock at 1:27 PM
16 Comments:
Looks great. Now, if only it was wireless or had bluetooth! It would be great to give it to one of your students and let them control the image on the projector. That would seal the deal for me. Can I ask how much Best Buy are selling them for?
Can't believe I forgot the price...$69.99 at Best Buy.
Just got one myself from the local Best Buy. Very impressed so far.
Oh foo--it's not wireless? Great review still. I like it, and the price is not bad either. Thanks for sharing. Another gadget added to my growing Christmas list. Well, at least its cheaper than an i-phone. Si
oh wow! sounds great! I'm not a big "mouse" fan myself but my kids are so..not sure..any other great advantages?
I have the "Pen & Touch" (the next model up from the touch) on order from Staples. I can't wait to get it. I am amazed at how Wacom has not announced this great new addition to their product line. This is kind of the opposite of Vaporware ...
Thanks for the review.
Can you see if the Chinese Handwriting Functionality in Snow Leopard works with this Tablet?
I have an older Mac without those new trackpads but would love to handwrite Chinese.
Does the trackpad area map to the screen on both touch input and pen input? In other words, if I place my finger on the upper right corner, does the pointer jump to the upper right corner of the screen?
There is no pen input on this model, and, no, it is like a regular trackpad or a mouse, you have to move your finger around a bit to get it to start where you want it to.
Thank for the review. At the store now, so this was helpful and understanding the product.
Something you missed in your review of the unit: it is totally broken if you use Mac OS X's accessibility zoom feature.
And by broken I mean completely useless.
The mouse pointer acts as if it is magnetically attracted to the upper left of the screen making it impossible to navigate the mouse pointer using the Bamboo Touch.
They offered no fix, no refund and told me I need to purchase an Intuos 4 instead. I never would have pictured Wacom as being so insensitive to the disabled.
I love this, I just wish it were bigger! I'm a graphic designer on a 24" iMac...5.8"x3.6" just doesn't cut it. Still waiting...
How is the feel/touch compared to the newest Macbook Pro pads? I really love the one on my Macbook and a lot of it has to do woth the texture.
Lauren: There is a bigger model called Bamboo Fun.
Eddie,
There is no comparison with the glass, smooth, touchpads on the MacbookPros. The Mac wins that one hands-down since the Bamboo surface is plastic and does offer some resistance at times.
Kathy: Thank you for your answer. Even though it's not the answer that I wanted to hear :( I guess it's a miss on this one then... And I was getting all ecstatic about it.
It is textured purposefully to offer resistance, if a small pad offered resistance on this level it would be harder to be precise, this is to the oppoisite effect.. and the pad offers things the mac one doesn't, such as the level of pressure sensitivity and on the higher models the angle of the pen..
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