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Wacom Bamboo Fun Review

Love it! Wish I had gotten it sooner.
I love everything about the Bamboo Fun! For my desktop it's far better than a mouse. I do web development, graphic design, and photography so for my type of work it's sort of a no-brainer. There's so much more control with photo and graphics work using a tablet than there ever could be with a mouse.

As I've used it more, I've gotten more used to the pen, which is probably the fastest way to work with your computer. When I first started, I used finger touch since it was something I was already familiar with from working with the touch pad on my laptop. That's what the tablet is like when used with your finger – a giant touch pad, but it's so much better because of the space you have to work with for motion. Plus, there are certain usability things that make using your computer and software so much easier – like finger gestures. You may have heard of mouse gestures, which are in some web browsers that have add-on software that allow you to swipe left and right to perform a back or next click in your browser. Well, with the Bamboo tablets, you can navigation backwards and forwards with a finger swipe left or right in any software on your computer. It's not just isolated to web browsing. This one thing makes a tablet really convenient for computer use.

The more I use it the more I find that certain types of activities are best done with the fingers and some are better with the pen. Surfing the web, for example, is definitely a finger touch activity. Photo manipulation or working with files in my web development apps is definitely a pen job. Every user could have their own style of using a tablet but that's what great about it.

There is definitely a learning curve with this thing so if you decide to give it a try, be patient and make yourself use it a lot for at least a week. The first day I had mine I was already thinking of returning it. It felt awkward and slow. Now though… I wish I had gotten one a long time ago. I now dislike having to use a mouse for many things.

This isn't for everyone though. If you are just a casual computer user, you may not find this as valuable as someone who edits photos, does graphics, etc.

Fantastic tablet for the money!
I spent quite a bit of time looking at various tablets, reading reviews, and trying to figure out which had the most bang for the buck; the Bamboo Fun won in just about every category. Please note that I am not a professional graphic artist, just a hobbyist (though technically savvy enough to understand the features [eg pressure sensitivity]), so I'm reviewing it from that perspective.

Installation was a snap. Download the latest drivers from the Wacom site, plug it into a USB port, and you're all set. I tried it out on two laptops and a desktop and installation was flawless on each.

The tablet is thin and light, with a more-than-adequate amount of active space (I wanted something that would let me do longer strokes without feeling cramped). The multi-touch capability is really nice with graphics programs that support it; being able to pan and zoom with my left hand while my right remains mostly dedicated to drawing is great (and a quick press of one of the Bamboo's 4 buttons will turn touch off, which comes in handy [no pun intended]). For reference, the touch-sensitive area is 7.5″ x 5.1″ and the pen-active area is a fairly generous 8.5″ x 5.4″. You can configure it for left-handed use (lefties rejoice!).

The tablet is very smooth and responsive with Sketchbook Pro and ArtRage 2.5. I wasn't that thrilled with Corel Painter 4 Essentials, which comes bundled with it; the UI was clunky and not very intuitive (spend the $20 on ArtRage instead – you won't regret it). The Bamboo Fun also comes bundled with Photoshop Essentials, which should be useful if you don't already have a full version of Photoshop.

The battery-less pen, with two configurable buttons and 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity, is very comfortable in the hand and I admit it, I love the eraser on the end. The tablet has a fabric loop on one side for holding the pen when transporting it.

The tablet comes with three extra nibs and an extraction tool, which isn't listed in the product description.

Overall, for a couple of steps above entry level I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the Bamboo Fun as a great tablet for the price.

Perfect for photoediting
I have had my Bamboo tablet for about 3 weeks now and, in general, I am pretty satisfied. I primarily have been using it for editing photos with photoshop, but I have also tried out simple freehand drawing as well. I am going to break down this review into the good and the bad

Pro:
- Wacom – The brand means quality. It just works and works well. The interface is well designed and hardly takes any effort to get up and running

- Workspace – This tablet has the largest workspace available from Wacom for this price range. Unless you're interested in just making little doodles, I think you really need the extra space for working on a decent quality photo. For those unfamiliar with tablets, the tracking isn't quite the same as a laptop touchpad where the touching the pad simply moves the pointer from its current position. The tablet maps 1:1 with the screen so if you touch the upper left of the tablet, the pointer goes to the upper left of the screen. This means that the smaller the pad, the less space you have to maneuver the pen around in. The size of this tablet is almost equal to most laptop screens which I think works very well

- Pen sensitivity/function – this tablet has more pressure sensitivity than previous tablets in the same price range (in fact it has equal sensitivity to earlier version of higher level Wacom tablets). For me, this has allowed me to edit photos with enough sensitivity that I don't feel limited by the abilities of the tablet. Drawing is another story. While you can do quite well making sketches with the tablet, there is a bit of a learning curve and an upper limit to how well you can learn how the tablet reacts, which I think means that it will always feel a bit clumsy if you are used to doing fine quality pen/pencil drawings on paper.

Cons:

- Software package – The truth is that if you are thinking about buying a tablet like this, you probably already have a program like Photoshop. Thus, the inclusion of Photoshop Elements and Corel Draw will needlessly bump up the price of the tablet for most people. However, if you don't already have these programs, it definitely is a steal. Plus, for people more interested in photos, like me, it's been fun to play with Corel Draw which I might not normally have tried (as an aside, I've noticed that for an average power laptop, Corel Draw actually responds faster than photoshop for simple drawing). However, if the size of the tablet is a major plus of this tablet to you, you're not going to get it any other way other than bumping up to the higher level tablets. So, even if the software might be useless for you, it's still a better deal for the money.

- USB cable – the USB cable for the tablet is fixed directly into the table. This means that if the cable gets damaged or you somehow drop the tablet while holding on the cable and yank it out, the tablet is done for. So the durability of the tablet is entirely dependent on the durability of the cable. So be careful with it.

Summary:

In general I would recommend this tablet for just about any level of photoediting other than professionals who work on photos on a day to day basis. It's great for people just getting started with tablets as well as serious amateurs who don't want to spend the extra couple hundred dollars on the Intuos tablets. However, drawers might not be as satisfied. I have am not a drawer nor have I tried the professional level tablets so I can't say if the experienced is much improved with the higher quality products, but I think the bamboo is a little clumsy when it comes to sketching. However, if you are interested in doodling and rough drawings, it probably will suit you fine.

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