Product Reviews

The problem the Intuos3 A5 Wide is designed to solve has come about thanks to the increasing use of screens that conform not to the standard 4:3 aspect ratio, but to the more cinematic 16:10 format. This is particularly true for us Mac users - Apple has been steadily moving all its computers and standalone displays over to this format, and now only the iBooks and 12in PowerBook currently retain the 4:3 ratio.

The way graphics tablets traditionally work is by mapping the entire surface of the graphics tablet directly to the dimensions of the screen, so that when you place the stylus at the top left of the graphics tablet, the cursor appears at the top left of the screen. The position of the cursor is dictated not in relation to where it last appeared (as with a mouse) but as a specific spot on the two-dimensional space of the tablet's surface.

However, because of

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this, if you try to use a graphics tablet that uses a 4:3 aspect ratio (as all have up to now) with a widescreen monitor, images are distorted; draw a perfect circle on your graphics tablet and you'll get a horizontally-stretched ellipse on the screen.

The new 16:10 tablet should eliminate this, but in truth the effect is still present, albeit to a much less offensive degree. Even on displays that are true 16:10, such as with the 17in PowerBook and the Cinema Displays, directly mapping the tablet surface to the screen still slightly stretches the input horizontally. It's even more apparent on 15in PowerBooks, as their screens aren't quite 16:10. You can force direct mapping to correct this, but you lose a narrow strip down the right side of the tablet.

Otherwise, this is an excellent tablet, and our comments on the Intuos3 line when it was first introduced apply here. The stylus with interchangeable nibs is chunky and comfortable, and the combination of 5080spi (samples per inch) and 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity make for a beautifully naturalistic drawing tool. The driver is rich, and allows the range of styli and the ExpressKeys and Touch Strips to be configured on a per-application basis.

Wacom has dropped the mouse, which had been included with some of the 4:3 models in the Intuos3 range, but for many this was a superfluous item anyway. A copy of the cut-down, natural media application Painter Essentials 2 is also bundled with it.