Touch to go

Wacom’s long been a known name for anyone in the digital creative field looking to forego a mouse in favour of a more precise pen-and-canvas combo. Only this time around, with the Bamboo Pen & Touch, they’ve added support for a pointing device most have used since childhood — fingers!

The Rs 7,200 black Pen & Touch is a 5.8in-by-3.6in tablet, which connects to your PC/Mac via USB, and can function like giant multi-touch laptop touchpads. The first thing that strikes you is how thin and lightweight it is, so it’s clear Wacom intends you to carry this device wherever you go.

As with all Wacom tablets, it comes with a pen which can be stowed in a fabric loop on the right edge of the tablet. The pen is batteryless, features eraser and pen inputs on either end, plus a rocker button on the barrel, and is most comfortable to hold and use. The pen now recognises 1,024 levels of pressure, which most users may not notice in everyday use, but is a godsend to anyone using the pen to illustrate in Photoshop and the like.

Put the pen down, and the Bamboo transforms into a giant touchpad. Pressing one finger to the tablet lets you move the mouse cursor around on-screen, and you use two fingers to perform gestures for tasks such as scrolling, zooming in and out, and moving backwards and forwards in Web browsers, image editors, and other applications.

It takes some getting used to, but it’s well worth the effort if you don’t have a multi-touch trackpad on your laptop. Before long, you’ll be revelling in the pinch and zoom effect with the web and photos, and all of this works across Windows 7/Vista and the Mac OS. You can ditch the mouse — the Bamboo comes with buttons that can emulate mouse left and right clicks, and have only one device in front of you on the table.

That’s the theory, at least. Over some amount of sustained use, the pen performs brilliantly, but the touch pad is a tad sluggish and laggy. It’s just not as responsive as Apple’s laptop touchpad hardware, so on a Mac, your mileage will vary depending on whether you use the touchpad for gestures or not. Fortunately, if you just want to use it in Pen mode, there are buttons to disable the touch pad so that stray fingers don’t come in the way of your work.

Net net, if you’re looking for an affordable and portable alternative to Wacom’s more expensive Intuos tablet line, the Bamboo Pen & Touch is worth looking at — particularly if you are a digital artist who needs something portable. The touch functionality is more of a novelty at the moment, and will need a solid driver update before it becomes as fluid and usable.

Rating: 7/10

Price: Rs 7,200

URL: http://www.wacom.com/bamboo/bamboo_pen_touch.php


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