Product Reviews

Wacom is best known for its Intuos series of graphics tablets, aimed at the high-end graphics designer. However, with the advent of Ink in Mac OS X, and similar technologies in Windows Vista, it's turning its attention to home and business users with Bamboo.

Bamboo is small, inexpensive and smart. It has a writing area the size of a postcard, and although it's perfectly usable in Photoshop, with 256 levels of pressure sensitivity, it's really designed for use in more day-to-day applications. These applications include Apple Mail, where you might sign your outgoing messages, or Office where

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you would circle a point you want to query.

The sensitive working area is supplemented by four buttons, which navigate backwards and forwards in a browser, and perform two user-defined functions. These are arranged around a circular scroll area, not unlike the wheel of an iPod, which you use to zoom in and out of the current active document.

The usual first-timer confusion over using a tablet aside, Bamboo is easy to get to grips with, and perfectly sized for pushing out of the way when not in use. It doesn't ship with a mouse, like some other tablets, but will exist happily alongside whatever pointing mechanism you already have plugged into your Mac, so needn't be your only navigation device.

The pen, which accompanies it, is comfortable and well balanced, with an active point and a virtual eraser at the opposite end. It comes with a stand to save you from losing it. Everything is powered through the USB bus, without the need for batteries or an external power supply.

We feel Wacom is slightly underselling Bamboo's features. It looks great and is an excellent, inexpensive introduction to working with a tablet for anyone who hasn't used one before.