Wacom has long been widely regarded by digital artists as the pinnacle of digitizers and input devices. However, premium brands often come with premium prices, and in the absence of Wacom’s affordable pens for his display, many aspiring digital his artists were looking for alternatives. Wacom is finally starting to look at the untapped potential of budget-friendly devices and is filling that void with the Wacom One pen display.
The Wacom One pen display packs the build quality and features experienced digital artists want into an affordable product that’s harder to reach than Wacom’s more expensive Cintiq line. But affordability comes at a cost, and many of the features that make working with the Cintiq fun have been removed from the One to stay within budget constraints.
Wacom One: Pricing and Availability
Pen displays are often considered a niche hardware accessory and are often sold exclusively online through major hardware marketplaces such as Amazon. Wacom, however, is a notable exception. Many of the company’s pen displays and drawing tablets are available in physical stores such as Best Buy and Microcenter, as well as online. The Wacom One’s standard price is around $400, but the display sometimes goes on sale.
Wacom One: What do you like?
Wacom’s Intuos series of drawing tablets are beginner-friendly and affordable, but lack a stylus-friendly screen for input. On the other end of the spectrum, Wacom’s Cintiq line offers professional quality with cutting-edge technology, but at a price point that makes even professional artists hesitate to buy. It fits nicely between these two other product lines by filling the gap by offering the reliable features you’ve come to expect from its name and being more affordable than its older sibling, the Cintiq. I notice.
At just 13.3 inches wide, the One is an amazingly portable pen display. It fits easily in most laptop bags and is always at your fingertips when the creative urge strikes. In addition to being suitable for use with laptops and desktops, Wacom One can also be used with select Android devices. The display has wide bezels that are fairly standard for Wacom devices, leaving a real working area of 11.6 inches by 6.5 inches in a 16:9 aspect ratio. The tablet’s screen has a matte anti-glare coating, while the back of the device has an off-white finish and is accented with black legs that can be extended or folded at the user’s option.
Bundled with the Wacom One display is a slim Wacom pen that shares an off-white and black color pattern. It feels more like drawing with a traditional pen than with competing stylus pens on the market. The stylus uses a standard nib that can wear out over time with use. Wacom has a replacement nib built into the back of the display tablet, under an extendable leg, with a small metal nib puller.
Setting up the Wacom One takes just a few steps and is relatively quick, even for people who have never installed a pen display on a desktop PC or laptop. A cable connector is included in his Wacom One’s box and plugs into the USB-C output port on the top left of the display. The connector then splits the line into three additional lines: one is a power plug that must be plugged into an electrical outlet, and the other two cables lead to HDMI and USB-A ports. , you can easily install the driver by going to the Wacom support website and selecting your display unit model.
The Wacom One’s support software has been pared down to a few options, including a slider that allows users to specify nib hardness and double-click distance. The only button on the stylus barrel can also be customized to your liking from this interface. There are also options to calibrate the monitor and pen from this menu, but we found the Wacom One stylus to be very accurate straight out of the box, requiring no further adjustments.
Wacom One: what’s wrong
Despite being nimble and responsive, the Wacom One pen display clearly had to cut back on some features to match its price point. Although it boasts gesture support, the Wacom One has no such feature. To be fair, touch support isn’t even a common feature among Wacom’s competitors for displays of this size and price, but Wacom is clearly adding touch and gesture support along with the pen display’s stylus We have the technology to make the
It feels like a bit of an oversight not to include touch support when Wacom has one of the most notable technological advancements at its disposal. there is not. This is a feature that is prominent in competitor pen displays. There’s an optional Express Key Remote that can be purchased bundled with the Wacom One, but expect the device’s price to jump another $100 or so depending on sales.
The Wacom One was originally released in 2019, and there has been no move on the part of Wacom to add more to this line of pen displays. The 11.6-inch active display area is therefore limited to a 1080p screen resolution, and the pen display’s color output is only 72% of the RGB color spectrum. Recently released displays have more than 90% color gamut, even in the 13.3-inch market, and many exceed that benchmark. The stylus is also a bit dated with 4096 points of pressure, but 8192 points is widely considered the industry standard at this point.
Wacom One: Competition
As mentioned above, the Wacom One was originally released in 2019, and with no follow-up devices added to the One lineup since then, the current offering is a bit dated and lacking when compared to its competitors. Wacom has long been the industry standard and innovation leader in the world of digital art with its digitizers and pen displays, but the likes of XP-Pen, Xencelabs, Huion, Gaomon, etc. brands have made great strides in creating affordable and accessible input devices. Similar to Wacom’s One display, XP-Pen offers a 13.3 Artist Pro pen display for just $300 within your budget. Unlike the Wacom One, however, the XP-Pen 13.3 Artist Pro offers eight customizable express keys, two customizable radial dials, 8192 levels of pressure sensitivity, and a high color gamut.
Wacom One: Should You Buy It?
The Wacom One falls a little short on the technology front, but the device has a solid build quality, well-designed software that’s easy to use, and a respectable year-long run backed by a brand known for excellent customer service. We offer a warranty. Digitizers, drawing tablets, and pen displays are expensive investments for digital artists, and having a device that holds up as an investment beyond the initial purchase is just as important as pressure sensitivity levels and express keys. For novice artists or those with a bit more experience looking to upgrade from a drawing tablet to a pen display, that peace of mind is invaluable, and the Wacom One is the perfect device to fill that niche.
However, more experienced artists may find that the limited capabilities and limited screen size of such a small display don’t fit their workflow.The Wacom One is a portable option for some. It’s still useful as a, but more specialized and skilled users are most likely to gravitate to the Wacom Cintiq over the One.
Wacom One Creative Pen Display
The quality of a professional pen display doesn’t have to be prohibitively expensive. The Wacom One is a great affordable starter device for beginners and budget-minded creatives.
