Sep 242013
 

Wacom Intuos5 Touch Medium Pen Tablet (PTH650)

Wacom Intuos5 Touch Medium Pen Tablet (PTH650)

  • Quickly and professionally edit photos and create digital artwork using natural pen control
  • Use the new multi-touch surface to pan, zoom, navigate and more
  • 2048 levels of pen pressure sensitivity for precise pressure control
  • User-defined ExpressKeys put time saving shortcuts, at your fingertips
  • Express View display provides an on-screen reference for each key’s function, keeping you focused on your work
  • Custom radial menus for rapid navigation
  • The finger-sensitive Touch Ring provides intuitive control of scrolling, brush size, and more

Designed to meet the high performance demands of creative professionals and photo, art, and design enthusiasts, Intuos5 combines Wacom’s finest pen tablet experience with multi-touch input in a single device. Immerse yourself in a natural, intuitive workflow alternating between using multi-finger touch to position and navigate your artwork, and the pressure sensitive pen to precisely sketch, paint, retouch, and edit your ideas. The time-saving ExpressKeys can be customized for your favorite appl

List Price: $ 369.95

Price: $ 369.95

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  3 Responses to “Wacom Intuos5 Touch Medium Pen Tablet (PTH650) Reviews”

  1. 176 of 183 people found the following review helpful
    5.0 out of 5 stars
    Intuos5 Med vs Lrg, March 9, 2012
    By 
    emora

    Amazon Verified Purchase(What’s this?)
    This review is from: Wacom Intuos5 Touch Medium Pen Tablet (PTH650) (Personal Computers)

    UPDATE 4/2 – I have been working on the large tablet for two weeks. It has been working great without any glitches or lockups (i’ve still yet to have any driver problems..ever). I feel a lot more confortable with the tablet to screen ratio. When I draw the strokes feel a lot more comfortable and natural. When it comes down to choosing between the Medium or the Large size tablet, you have to look at what your main working focus is going to be. Since I do illustration and digital painting, I value the natural feel and movements. I do agree with the fact that you could retrain your muscle memory to a smaller tablet but it’s simply your preference. My co-worker has a small tablet and his main use is for photo retouching/editing. The touch function is handy when you get use to the new gestures, but again, I feel that the gestures are mostly for navigation and partially for some convenience. Main focus of a tabled is for pen/tablet graphical work (at least for me). I do like that you can turn the touch gestures on and off with a button. Also really like that if I gently place my finger over the button, the tabled will display the map of each function for the buttons. I still give this tablet a 5 stars because of the ergonomical confort in the design, But, most importantly, it is an amazing tablet to work with. As an digital illustrator/painter, the large size meets my needs for the most natural feel (updated 4/2).

    This tablet is simply amazing. The new button set up and feel is a great change. While drawing you really get a paper texture feel. If you have used an Intuos4, you might not notice much of a pressure and response difference but the new buttons and rubber is a big change. I think its a lot more practical and more efficient while in use. I constantly found myself feeling like I needed to clean my Intuos4 from smudging it.

    Now, if you are considering Medium vs Large….
    I use to have an Intuos4 Lrg and loved it. I owned the tabled for 2 years and used for graphic design, illustrations, and some digital painting. The strokes always felt very natural and good ration of tabled to screen. I hardly ever used the precision mode button because my table to screen ratio was very good.

    Intuos5 Med…..
    Now, I switched to the new Intuos5 medium and loved the new look and feel, but did not like the screen to tabled ratio. Just navigating through photoshop from one end of the screen to the other was very awkward. I messed around with the mapping settings and I still couldn’t get something that I liked. Now, I have been using a Large tablet for the past 2 years and it might take some time to adjust. But, since I rely so much on my tablet for what I do as a career, to me it is worth spending a little more and getting what I am already confortable with.

    Professionally speaking, the tablet to monitor ratio is a big deal to me. If you are using the tablet with just a 15 or 17 monitor/ laptop, the Medium tablet ratio is probably okay. If you are primarily using the tablet for photo touch up and some moderate design, the Medium size will suit your needs. But, if you have some drawing background (fine arts), you will probably find the Large tablet to suit your needs. The biggest reason is the way you probably do your strokes, you use your arm & shoulder instead of your wrist. Wrist movement would be appropriate (common) for photo touchups, and some illustrations, but for bigger custom made designs you would want the Large tablet. The medium size tablet is like drawing on half a sheet of paper at a time and the Large tablet is like drawing on a whole piece of paper (8.5×11).

    One big thing I noticed was the active area difference between the two tablets. The active area is only within the white cross hairs (or “L” figures) on the tablet. You have an extra .5″ of blank space around the active area and it doesn’t really seem to do anything (at least from what I could tell). This makes your active area a lot smaller than what it looks. This was a big deal breaker for me and the reason for why I am going back to using the Large size tablet.

    When it comes down to performance, both tablets have equal sensitivity and touch performance, there is no question in that. The biggest thing is consider the monitor real estate you will be using and the tablet to monitor ratio. Remember that a tablet is a tablet for computer graphic work that requires a pen/ pencil style, not Navigation and or web browsing. The touch is a nice plus and I believe its just Wacoms way of gearing to the new Navigation style that computers are headed to.

    I will be returning the Medium and getting a Large. I will post an update once I get it

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  2. 78 of 81 people found the following review helpful
    4.0 out of 5 stars
    Great tablet with a bad driver (6.3.0-2) *UPDATEDx2*, March 5, 2012
    By 

    Amazon Verified Purchase(What’s this?)
    This review is from: Wacom Intuos5 Touch Medium Pen Tablet (PTH650) (Personal Computers)

    Update 9/11/2012: I have found a compromise system of settings between Apple and Wacom that seems to work fairly well. On Apple’s settings pane I UNcheck everything on the Point & Click tab and leave only the two Zoom boxes checked on the Scroll and Zoom tab (the More Gestures tab doesn’t seem to affect it). In the Wacom touch settings, Standard Gestures tab, I have UNchecked Tap to click, Tap to right click, and Rotate.

    My belief is that part of the problem arrises when the two touch features fight with each other, and this particular setup seems to minimize the arguments.

    I’m still using and happy with driver, version 6.3.2-4 (Mac)

    Update 7/11/2012: The latest driver, version 6.3.2-4 (Mac) is the first version that I would call good. It seems to include some palm rejection (a feature they had promised was in the pipe-line), and it makes all the difference in the world. At this point if you were holding off for decent drivers (and you are on a Mac), I’d say go ahead and pull the trigger. Windows drivers seem to lag behind the Mac drivers, so I can’t vouch for them. The palm rejection is not perfect – it only seems to work at the very bottom of the tablet for some reason – but it makes the tablet very much easier to use with your hand. The pen input remains, as ever, very good.

    Update 03/21/12: The latest driver, version 6.3.0-4, has resolved the crashing for me. They have also taken the initiative to contact me an discuss my continued issues with the current driver and my desires for future versions (This was not to my knowledge related to this review, but rather a support request). I now feel confident that they are working towards a multi-touch product as solid as their pen implementation, and now that the crashing has been resolved, have a highly usable product in the mean time. To be clear, for Mac users at least, the 6.3.0-4 driver is found somewhat wanting when compared to Apple’s own touch devices/multi-touch implementation. After discussing their plans though, I think that they are headed in the right direction, and that they are actively working to make an excellent multi-touch product, so I have upgraded my interim rating to reflect the improved driver.

    I bought this Intuos5 to replace an aging, but still highly functional Intuos2 (the first USB model).

    In short, I love the hardware. The capacitive/real buttons are good (though I’m not sold on the circular slider – the circumference is just not big enough for smooth action). The soft touch surface is great, the combination of pen and touch is a win for my use case. I’m a heavy Adobe user, and the pen has always been a great tool for those pieces of software. Where the pen came up short was standard OS interaction and casual web surfing, etc. This is where the multi-touch aspect of the tablet shines.

    Or rather this is where it SHOULD shine. The touch driver (6.3.0-2) is not ready for prime-time. Don’t get me wrong, the pen aspect is flawless, it’s only with touch, where the driver has to seamlessly hand off some touch interactions to the operating system (two finger scroll, pinch to zoom, etc.) and react appropriately to others (right and left tap to click) where the bugs pop up. I know from past experience with beta mouse drivers for the (touch) Magic Mouse that this is no easy task to accomplish, and it takes a lot of refinement to get it right. Wacom has not yet gotten it right. This is especially frustrating since the tasks that do not work consistently are the ones you use most (point and left or right “click”).

    In addition, I’ve had the tablet three days now, and the touch drivers have crashed five times. At one point they would not restart at all, and I had to reinstall(!) and reboot to get the tablet to function again. I’m not entirely sure why it crashes yet. I’ll just be busy trying to point and click, and it will suddenly become less responsive, and a window pops up saying that the touch drivers have crashed. Usually, a half-dozen taps later and the touch drivers restart, and we’re off to the races again. If, in the races, you then stop a few hundred yards down the track, again.

    So in summary, a solid pen tablet, that may become a great multi-touch device, if they ever get their drivers sorted out.

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  3. 218 of 238 people found the following review helpful
    3.0 out of 5 stars
    A Very Frustrating Device for a Longtime Wacom Fan, March 22, 2012
    By 
    S. Jenkins “Arshes Nei” (Torrance CA) –
    (VINE VOICE)
      
    (REAL NAME)
      

    Amazon Verified Purchase(What’s this?)
    This review is from: Wacom Intuos5 Touch Medium Pen Tablet (PTH650) (Personal Computers)

    Once again I purchase another Intuos to see what improvements have come along. Since I also help beta test software, I wanted to see the capabilities of this tablet.

    This is the first Intuos I’ve owned that the first impression is not great

    [EDIT - 9/1] Decided to update the review with a new edit. A Wacom rep contacted me over this review and has been working with me since to help keep fixing issues I’ve mentioned previously. I still get Tablet orientation problems when installing new drivers. I also have gotten a crash sometimes. If you get “TABLET NOT FOUND” There are two services that you need to restart in Windows.

    TabletServiceWacom
    and
    WacomProfessionalTouchService

    The HUD is no longer lagged and I have to wait a moment for the switching between wired and wireless mode. I had it crash in Sketchbook Pro 6.

    Touch is much better in programs that have actually taken the time to utilize it vs the default. Painter 12 and Sketchbook Pro 6 work much better with it.

    [EDIT - 6/19] There is a new driver on Wacom’s site 6.3.2.w3 that will finally allow your Windows computer to sleep. I did run into the problem where the icons on my taskbar and start menu were broken but since fixed the icon cache.

    [EDIT - 3/24] I finally got the wireless kit, which is an extra 40 dollar purchase, and there are some problems with it too. I placed it up top of my review since people haven’t seen much on the wireless performance. When the wireless is installed on Windows 7 it causes the device to lose preferences and won’t respond. If you go to hit your tablet preferences it will say “Driver not found” I had to go to the Services – TabletWacom and restart it. Then it launched with my preferences. It took more than 6 hours to charge. You’ll often see the indicator saying it’s at 97 percent. I finally got the “Charged” icon this morning. I plugged it in at 7pm last night and it’s now 8:45 am the next day.

    …Well I take that back a bit. Apparently when you plug the tablet back in to USB, it completely loses your preferences. What in the world? This is aggravating! It sometimes comes back, but it looks like I have to use my trackpad or mouse to get it to launch with the preferences again by opening the Wacom control Panel Preferences. It also looses my mapping orientation when navigating through touch. That completely defeats the purpose of this tablet being touch!

    Some things I noticed. There seems to be less lag with the on screen popup and buttons in wireless mode than USB. Interesting… There is a problem with navigation in wireless mode it appears. When I have to full screen a document in programs, it stops navigating. I don’t expect it to draw, but I see no reason why it should stop causing cursor movement. So sigh…frustration again.

    So apparently when plugged in and I try to navigate through touch, this tablet looses my mapping preferences, so what am I supposed to do, flip the tablet around each time? This is ridiculous!

    —————————————————————————————————————-

    I still have my Wacom Intuos3 6 x 8-Inch Pen Tablet and you can also see that I own the Wacom Intuos4 Large Pen Tablet. I have to say this is the first tablet that has me frustrated upon first impression. I love the Intuos line of tablets from Wacom, but I find while there are some improvements, there are some shortcomings that almost had me returning the tablet.

    So many people want to know… “has the surface improved? Is it still a nib eating beast?”
    Answer is yes. I actually find the surface worse than my intuos4. The intuos4 had a nice paper feel where it was a good comfortable sketchbook. This feels like you’re using a quill pen on newsprint. It just feels a bit more irritating and rougher. I at first thought I was scratching the tablet when trying out the touch portion, but it was actually filing my fingernails. Here’s a bigger thing to consider. This is a touch tablet, and if you scratch the surface be prepared to send the tablet back in for repair. There is no overlay sheet for this tablet though I have seen some surface protectors (not sure how it fares), the touch surface is integrated into the tablet. This is why you simply can’t replace a scratched surface with an overlay sheet.

    Have the USB ports improved. Answer, not certain. The medium tablet has one usb port, and when I used the cable with the tablet it still felt wiggly. So I do feel a bit of unease. I feel they took a step back with the ambidextrous setup the…

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