So, let's talk about WACOM.

Hey there, lads! Been a long time since I wrote an actual text here! And, as always, I address you when my ass is burning in hellish flame of butthurt. So, let's talk about WACOM tablets. 

I've been using WACOM tablets since the beggining of my experience as a digital artist in 2006, so let me give you a short history of tools I used. 

First one was Volito 2 (picture from internet).

Volito was a decent tool, and it was almost understructible. Pen without replacable nibs, also usable as a shiv, body that you could use a bulletproof shield and heavy enough to use it a paper press. 

Volito served me well for almost five years (remember that number), before its pen nib completely worn off and one day it simply died internally (probably caught short, since I poored coffee on it not once or twice). I mourned its honorable death for an hour, and rushed to the local electronic shop, where I bought...

 CTL-470 (back then it was called Bamboo)

I think it was year 2011, and that one served me quite well till, I think till 2015, when due constant use of it I eventually covered its surface with a such amount of skratches that I've decided to swap it for an updated version of it...

 CTL-671 (sometimes called Wacom One) 

And this particular tablet is really the one, since it had amazing qualities for its low price. Solid as a brick, large active zone, decent solid pen with good pressure sensitivity - I still use it today at my dayjob, where I require something small enough to simply toss it in my bag and work where I need. 

During that time there was a small period when I constantly drawn on my friend's Intuos 4 (amazing tablet) and Cintiq 13 HD (not so amazing, he bought it, we had fun with it for a week, and then decided that it's too weird for everyday use), so eventually I've decided that I neet and Intuos. So, in 2017...

PTH-660 (Intuos 6)

And this is my reason of my today's butthurt. 

Well, on a positive side - that's Intuos. Won't lie to you:

1) It's slim

2) It's light

3) Even though WACOM allowed artist to change upper surface sheets if they are damaged, original one is so well built, that i don't have a single scratch on it even after more than two years of everyday usage. 

Now to the negative side:

1) It's slimness allows the tabled to be a bit flexible, which would've been ok, if it won't make squeaky noises while doing that. 

2) Belly rubber panels, which are supposed to fix your tablet on your table, quickly become loose, and tend to unglue themselves and move separately from the tablet itself. 

3) And the main cause of my butthurt. Pro Pen 2. Let's talk about this wreck in a separate section of this post. 

 Pro Pen 2 (and why it is shitty)

Voltaire once wrote: "The best is the enemy of the good". And that's exactly what's wrong with Pro Pen 2. 

First of all - I want to punch whoever decided to add useless eraser in it. Yes, Pro Pen 2 is not the first pen to use it, but seriousy, not a single artist I know don't use it. And you know why? Because it's at least 20 times more faster to simply tap "e" (for eraser) on the keyboard and then tap "b" (for brush) then rotating the pen it your fingers to get eraser, and then rotating it back into original position. So it's basically useless. But it's not its uselessness that causes problems. Addition of eraser removed crucial support point for internals of the pen. Let me clarify. 

Internals of Bamboo-type pen are sitting solid inside the body of the pen, giving you a feeling that you use a good, sharp tool. And even if you will use it constantly - internals won't move, cause they don't have anywhere to move. 

On the contraty Pro Pen 2 internals are a bit loose inside the body of the the pen straight from the box. And by time it gets worse. Sooner or later your Pro Pen will start to click and wobble a bit. It don't affect capturing of data from the pen, but it's extremely annoying, since a pen which cost 100+ USD should not act like a cheap plastic toy after a year of usage. Also, there is almost a 100% possibility that you pen eventually will start either missing some strokes you make, or to randomly glitch while drawing, making jumps in pressure. 

And if you think the situation is not that bad - my aforementioned friend had bought PTH-660 too, cause his Intuos 4 died. And guess what, his pen started missing strokes within 6-month period from purchase. Mine pen started glitching with pressure date within 1 year. 

Another amazingly stupid thing with Pro Pen 2 is that despite its bazillion (actually  8192) levels of pressure - it can't even give you a full pressure range of cheaper Bamboo pen. Let me show you. 

The upper line is drawn using Pro Pen 2. The lower one - Bamboo pen (LP-171). See the difference? Yup, Pro Pen 2 fails to give you announced levels of pressure. Here, watch this. 

(Yes, Russian is my native language, deal with it)

In the red circle you can see the maximum pressure that I get from two (!) Pro Pens 2 (one brand new) on without applying any unsusual loads on the pen. It means that if I use, for example, a brush 10 pixels thick, and I will try to draw a slowly thickening line with it - Pro Pen will say "f*uck u", and won't allow you to draw anyting thicker than 7 pixels. 

Bamboo pen (LP-171), which was shipped in combo with One tablet (and that combo cost less than single shitty Pro Pen 2) uses full range of pressure, allowing me to draw line thickening from 1px to 10px using a single 10px brush. 

Lowering pressure setting for ProPen 2 don't help, since then it fails to give you required range of sensitivity, starting straight from 30% pressure, giving you 3px line. So it's either possibility to draw thin lines, or the possibility to draw a thick line. You can't have both. 

I've tested this on two various PTH-660 with three various ProPen 2 (one brand new, specially bought for that test) - all sets gave the same disappointing result.

As you can guess - I`m very angry. 

Conclusion

I hope this post was informative to you. Next time you will choose a tablet - remember this information and consider manufacturers other than Wacom. I, personally, am very dissapointed in such decline in quality, and even though I used Wacom tablets all my life I think I won't purchase their products from now on. I, as an artist, need a reliable tools, and if Wacom can't provide them now - I will vote with my dollar against Wacom. 

And there's a lot of people that share my opinion, check this redding thread for example. 

See you next time my ass will burn!