Wacom Intuos S Initial impressions

Jul 26, 2024

To preface this, I will admit that I got this for free from a special program, therefore, my value rating might not be ideal. However, I will try my best, as this tablet was worth 15 hours of my time.

Unboxing

The unboxing experience is really nice. It arrived in a box with a rather minimalistic design. Opening it up using the two side openings is definitely the best way to do a product like this, and while it might take away from the premium feel, the premium feel only matters so long as it isn't an inconvenience, which fancy box opening designs often are.

Upon opening it up, you are greeted by the casing of the whole thing, on top you will find the tablet secured in a good amount of plastic wrap, and below it you will find the manuals and other documents, the pen, and the USB-A to Micro-USB cable. This is a major let-down, but I'll get into it later. The pen is fully encased in another plastic wrap, but is very easy to take out. The Micro-USB cable is not wrapped, and it even comes with a custom designed rubber band attached to it to keep everything together. This is a nice touch because it means this can be reused plenty, while also looking and feeling nice.

Overall, while not the highlight of the product, and not a primary focus of the product, it was not in the way and it ultimately still resulted in a great deal of excitement as you slowly see the really nice looking products emerge one by one.

Design & Build Quality

The design is beautiful. It's minimalistic and yet still retains a lot of identity. The top strap to keep the pen in has the Wacom logo on it, and as a side-tangent, I greatly appreciate the fact that Wacom hasn't oversimplified their logo while still keeping it simple.

One of my personal favourites is how this tablet handles displaying where the drawing area is. The white dot grid within the black area signifies just that, while also looking really nice. The buttons are matte and feature a slight inward curve, about on par with the curve of a fingertip. Lastly, they've integrated the on indicator rather nicely, it's a white light in the middle of where the buttons are, perfectly inline with the top border of the button grid.

However, there's a big issue, at least in my opinion. The buttons on the pen have an immense amount of wiggle before they click, it feels like a cheap mouse. The pre-travel ends up making it uncomfortable to actually use the pen buttons sometimes.

In-hand feel

It feels amazing. As simple as that. It's really comfortable to use it. Buttons feel tactile, the pen feels nice to use. However, sometimes, for some reason, if you use it enough, you'll feel a weird scratching feeling if you move the pen along, but that is easily fixed by just wiping the surface and pen tip with your hand.

Software

The software is extremely versatile. It really isn't that big and it installs a lot of useful features. You can practically remap anything to whatever you want, there's also some handy presets like undo and redo, which is nice considering those two change app to app. On top of this, you can also apply global mappings and set up overrides for specific apps! Right now, I have it so that on Shapr3D, my 1st and 2nd buttons on the tablet are for hotkeying to make a line and unioning two objects respectively, and my 3rd and 4th are undo and redo. However, this is useless on Photoshop, so I haven't applied it there. On the pen, I have erase and pan/scroll on Photoshop and I replaced the pan/scroll with right click on Shapr3D. The point I'm trying to make is that this is a very versatile piece of software, where you can map anything you want to anything you want.

There's also a lot of other nice to have features, such as mapping the drawing area and whatnot.

Overall opinions

Bit of a short review, I know, but in my non-artist opinion, this is a reaaly good drawing tablet. Wacom is already known as a reliable and good brand for tablets, and this one is no different. I find great use in something like this, and I hope that I'm not the only one. If you are considering a drawing tablet, and are on a budget, I would highly recommend you have a look at this one.