This year Wacom turns 40: four decades spent supporting creatives, with tablets and displays designed to draw, design and create with a pen. But it is not a brand designed only for professionals: there are more and more students and enthusiasts who try graphics tablets and displays for the first time. There gamma Wacom One it allows you to bring your art and projects digitally and, at an event dedicated to printing in Milan, we had the opportunity to test them in person. With our very limited artistic ability but with a lot of technological curiosity.
Wacom One, we tested the range of tablets and displays
Founded in 1983, Wacom immediately wanted to establish a new way to interface with digital. The name “Wa + Com” in Japanese speaks of “harmony + computer/communication”, something that artists are increasingly looking for: to be able to bring the ease of using a pen with the potential of working on a computer.
A pioneer of digital pen technology, Wacom works with countless partners to create industry standards: Lenovo, Samsung, Toshiba, Windows, Chrome, HP, Dell, Android and others. But the pen is not just for professionals: it is one intuitive and powerful tool, which must survive in the digital age. And with devices from the Wacom One range.
The Wacom One product range
Wacom One is a family of products designed for those who want to start working in the world of digital art or design. But also for schools (especially with the Wacom for Education initiative) and for those who simply have a passion for design, from those who want to create online manga and comics to those who want a tool to easily edit images.
In addition to drawing digitally, tablets can especially become useful for working from home or in the office. In fact, they make it easiervisual thinking”: if you often use diagrams or drawings to explain yourself, you will have a very effective ally. But you can also use them to annotate Word or Power Point with ease.
The first Wacom One arrives in 2019, to present an accessible and simple to use product. However, the company decided to expand the family by taking advantage of what it learned from the first generation. Today there are displays Wacom One 13 touch e Wacom One 12, in addition to graphics tablets Wacom M e Wacom S.
The Wacom team explains to us that there are many innovations, but they all go in one direction: increasing the ease of use of the products. The setup, in fact, is even simpler, with just one cable. You can connect to your computer or Android devices via a USB-C cable. But if you only have USB-A or HDMI ports, you’ll find everything in the package. And there are also software bundles to fully test the product.
Once connected, downloading the drivers is enough scan the QR code. Signing in with a Wacom account is not mandatory, but it allows you to access various services, including software bundles for testing different apps.
I display
Interactive displays feature a screen 11.6 inches and 13.3 inchesoffering a resolution Full HD di 1920 x 1080 with a broad 99% sRGB. Optical bonding of screens offers greater precision and control. During our “doodles”, we could see how the response is practically immediate: just touch the pen to draw and write, as if on a sheet of paper.
Wacom One 13 touch is the first entry-level interactive display to support the feature multi-touch a 10 ditawhich once enabled makes it very easy to use both your hands and the pen to edit images or draw diagrams.
Graphics tablets
Wacom One S e M they are the first entry level pen tablets that offer a 4K pressure sensitivity and support tilting to allow for creation calligraphic effects. With customizable pen with 2 side buttons you can increase productivity. Plus, the pen comes in multiple colors, which is always a plus.
In our tests, we were able to easily move around the PC by holding the pen just detached from the tablet. Writing and drawing was very simple, with one very low latency with what we saw on the PC display, imperceptible.
Shared UD technology allows the use of the same pen with all products in the line and ensures device compatibility with some pens from popular stationery brands that support use with Wacom, such as Staedtler (for Wacom One displays only), LAMY or Dr. Grip. The new tablets, in addition to the cable connection, also have a connection bluetooth for maximum simplicity.
The Wacom One range also aims to sustainability: uses plasticat PCR between 7 and 16%, removed the plastic from the packaging. But he also worked to be able to use a single pen in all products.
Finally, in the range there is also a product designed specifically for brands: Wacom One Signature Display. It works perfectly for B2B, public administration and healthcare.
The Wacom Yuify service
In addition to letting us see first-hand the products announced this summer, the event also presented us with a very interesting service. For protect the copyright of artists, there is Yuify (“Yui” stands for connection). There is a plugin in Photoshop including a micromark which indicates who created the drawing or illustration. It will be in the image, invisible to the human eye. But it will remain analysable even if anyone who wants to use the art in question without permission takes a high definition screenshot of the drawing.
Furthermore, Wacom explains to us that the service records the work, in one blockchain eco-friendly to immutably record the transaction. This way you can protect your creations, something that is increasingly difficult for freelance artists.
Prices of the Wacom One range
Even though we have very little artistic skills, using the Wacom One displays and graphics tablets seemed very simple and intuitive to us. If you have a passion for drawing and art, or if you simply want a way to doodle digitally, these are the prices for the products:
- Wacom One 13 touch interactive display: €649.99
- Wacom One 12 interactive display: €429.99
- Wacom One M pen tablet: €169.99
- Wacom One S pen tablet: €119.99
More information on the Wacom website.