In the web and print design industry proper tool selection and proficient usage can make or break your productivity; be it a computer that’s fast enough with a large enough screen, a high-quality large format printer, an appropriate design software suite, or your choice of input devices such as keyboards and mice. In this review we’re looking at mice…or more specifically, the Wacom Intuos4 Pen Tablet.
Analogically speaking, a pen tablet is to a mouse as an 18 wheeler is to a Radio Flyer wagon.
[For those of you who are not in the industry or are otherwise not aware of what a pen tablet is, I suggest you read this before reading any more or else you will be SO lost.]
About 8 years ago I got my first pen tablet as a Christmas present. It was a Wacom Intuos2 and it totally changed my workflow and the way I designed and interacted with my computer. Around 3 years after that I upgraded to an Intuos3 that had a wide-screen aspect ratio and nifty customizable buttons and touch-sensitive scrolling pads. About two weeks ago I was privileged enough for upgrade my Wacom Intuos3 with a new Intuos4.

Intuos2

Intuos3

Intuos4
The biggest difference between my old Intuos3 and the new Intuos4 is size. There’s about a 2″ diagonal size difference in the canvas area. The was a little jarring at first because of the muscle memory I built up over the last few years using a smaller device. I found I had to make much large arm and hand gestures to reach certain points of my screen, but that’s more of a preference than anything. The truth of the matter is that the larger surface area creates more precise movements when illustrating.
Now, let’s talk new features.
The Intuos4 has 8 customizable buttons with coinciding LED displays that label the buttons with their function. This is something that was SORELY missing on the previous models. The Intuos3 did have 8 customizable buttons, but no way to know which one does which aside from memorization.

Intuos4 Buttons
Now, there is a downside to this. As cool as it is to have customizable buttons and LED displays, anyone who’s been in the industry for more than a year should proficient knowledge and muscle memory or key commands in certain applications like the Adobe Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, InDesign, etc). Out of the box I customized all of the buttons and tried to FORCE myself to use them but my keyboard muscle memory was to strong to overcome. So, in order to not let the buttons and the LED displays go to waste, I drew an ASCII cat who’s name is Mr. Bluefacé.


Scroll Wheel
Between the two sets of buttons in a scroll wheel. This is similar to the scroll bars on the Intuos3 in that it is touch sensitive and has no moving parts. However, when it comes to scrolling it’s more glaring improvement is that it’s in fact a circle instead of a vertical bar. This allows for a constant movement to scroll instead of repetitive swipes of your finger. Inside the scroll “wheel” is a push button with 4 different settings. Each setting makes the scroll wheel act differently. Examples may be scrolling in Firefox, zooming in Illustrator, switching between layers in Photoshop, etc. One negative about how this works is that they reverted back to their old ways in that there isn’t a way to label each setting; the settings are determined by a single blue LED dot instead of actual text.
Let’s move away from the funky electronic features and start discussing the canvas area.
As noted previously the canvas on this model is about 2″ larger than the previous model which allows for more precise gesturing and detail work.
Wacom also totally changed the texture of the canvas mat by giving it..well..more texture. This creates a totally different feel when using the pen than on previous models. It now feels much more like pencil on paper than it did previously even with the standard plastic pen nib. One downside of the new canvas mat is that the texture clings on to dirt. It’s harder to keep clean and after a while you can actually feel dirt rolling around under your hand. Also, finger prints are much harder to clean off. Though this point hasn’t yet been proven by me, I would also venture to guess that the increase in texture on the mat will mean that I’ll be burning through pen nibs much quicker than before.
On the topic of nibs, the new tablet comes with the same set of nibs that the Intuos3 came with; a bunch of standard plastic nibs, 3 felt nibs, and 1 spring-loaded nib. There is one new addition to the set though, a nib with a little rubber or foam (haven’t figured it out) tipped nib that makes the pen’s feel like you’re using a big magic marker.
Perhaps one of the best improvements to the Intuos4 is probably the simplest. There’s finally a place to store your spare nibs, actually INSIDE the pen holder!

Pen and Nib holder
There’s a few other minor features but in a nut-shell, that’s the Intuos4. I love it and couldn’t design without it.
PS: Oh yeah, it comes with a mouse too if you ever feel like lowering your efficiency.