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Product Description
Style: Create Pen and Touch
From the Manufacturer
The Bamboo Create pen and touch tablet opens up a new world for digital art and photo projects. With twice the workspace of other Bamboo tablets, Bamboo Create gives you plenty of space to express yourself, enabling broad brush strokes or arm movements. Let your creativity flow with Bamboo Create and its extensive suite of included software.
Precision pen input and control with 1,024 levels of pressure sensitivity. View larger.
Large, textured work surface provides a pen-on-paper feel. View larger.
Draw, paint, doodle, and sketch in your favorite software. View larger.
Inspire Your Imagination Using a Variety of Digital Media
Let your imagination soar as you draw, paint, doodle, and sketch in your favorite software. Create works of art using a variety of digital media, including pencils, pens, markers, chalks, watercolors, oil paints, and more.
Bamboo lets you express yourself with over 1,024 levels of pressure sensitivity. The pen gives you precision input and control, while the textured work surface gives you a familiar pen-on-paper feel.
Create Unique and Personalized Mementos
Turn digital images into special mementos. Use the pen to add hand-drawn embellishments or journaling to your projects and photos. Create unique, personal invitations, greeting cards, and photo books to print and share digitally with friends and family.
Engage Your Creativity with Multi-Touch Input
Bamboo Capture allows you to get hands-on with your photos by using Multi-Touch gestures to scroll, zoom, rotate, or flip through documents and photos. The Multi-Touch input places everything at your fingertips, making working with images both easy and intuitive.
For added convenience, four programmable ExpressKeys allow you to personalize your tablet and create effective shortcuts as you work.
Includes Bamboo's Most Extensive Suite of Creative Software
Bamboo Create includes the most comprehensive suite of creative software of any Bamboo tablet. Included in your purchase are full versions of Corel Painter Essentials, which is a powerful painting program; Adobe Photoshop Elements, a photo-editing program for retouching photos; AutoDesk SketchBook Express, a sketching app for visualizing your ideas, light sketching, and doodling; and Nik Color Efex Pro, which features simple filters for color enhancement and special effects. You even have access to a free 8- by 8-inch photobook from Shutterfly.
Compatibility and Warranty Information
Requiring a standard USB port for Mac and PC, Bamboo Create is compatible with Windows 7, Windows Vista SP2, or Windows XP SP3, and with Mac OSX 10.5 and above.
Bamboo Create is backed by a one-year warranty.
What's in the Box
Bamboo pen and tablet; Quick Start Guide; Bamboo installation CD (with driver software, Bamboo dock, online user's manual, and interactive tutorial); Software DVD (Adobe Photoshop Elements, Corel Painter Essentials, AutoDesk SketchBook Express, and Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0 WE3; training DVD on how to use Adobe Photoshop Elements and Corel Painter Essentials; offer for a free 8- by 8-inch photo book from Shutterfly; free offer for an online retail store from Café Press; and free offer for a one-year subscription to Scrapbooking and Beyond magazine.
| Bamboo Tablets |  |  |  |  |
| Name | SPLASH | CAPTURE | CREATE | Intuos5 |
| Sketching/Drawing/Painting | Fun with Photos | Art/Creative Projects | Photography/Art/Design | |
| Ideal Use | Get started with art | Turn ordinary photos into extraordinary ones | Advanced creative expression: draw, paint, retouch, and sketch | Designed to meet the high performance demands of creative professionals |
| Size | Compact size | Compact size | Twice the work surface | Small, medium, and large |
| Pen Input | Pressure sensitivity (1024 levels) | Pressure sensitivity (1024 levels) | Pressure sensitivity (1024 levels) | Pressure sensitivity (2048 levels) Tilt sensitivity ( 60 degrees) |
| Multi-Touch Input | N/A | Scroll, zoom, rotate, and swipe | Scroll, zoom, rotate, and swipe | Scroll, zoom, rotate, and swipe Interactive touch ring |
| Included Software |
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Product Description
Bamboo Create is a medium format pen and touch tablet specifically designed for the digital photo enthusiastic. The pressure sensitive pen gives you precise control for your digital photo editing creativity. Four ExpressKeys give you quick shortcuts implement your most frequently used commands. Included in the box are full versions of Adobe Photoshop Elements, Nik Color Filters, Corel Painter Essentials, a training DVD and a free coupon for an 8x8 Shutter fly photo album. Using the pen and Multi-Touch gestures gives you the precise control needed to take your creative projects to the next level. Draw, paint, annotate, sign and edit your photos and art all with the stroke of a pen. Does not include 'Autoscan Facebook Pro'.
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Style: Create Pen and Touch
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
604 of 617 people found the following review helpful
Style Name:Create Pen and Touch|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
I've used Wacom tablets for years, from the low end to the best they offer. When I had the chance to test this "fun" tablet I expected it to be rather basic. But it's actually quite impressive. For one thing, this can be used by both right- and left-handed users. I installed it on my Mac (OS Lion) with ease, and setup was a cinch. I'm used to Wacom's features, though, so I deliberately approached this as if I were a new user, and I was pleased that fine-tuning the functions and specs is quite simple. It's impressive how many ways you can engineer this tablet to work for you: you can designate myriad functions for each button, as well as the sensitivity of the pen tip and eraser.
I ran this in Photoshop CS5 and found that is assimilates perfectly as a drawing tool--new users who are considering this shouldn't be the slightest bit concerned that incorporating a tablet into their Photoshop, Corel, etc. apps will be buggy or requires lots of advanced setup. Nope, it works just how you hope it will. (New users should be prepared for the "weird" sensation of drawing on a tablet while looking at a screen; a pen is not a mouse, and you can't lift and reposition it while maintaining stationary cursor placement like a mouse. The tablet is the equivalent to your screen. Advanced tablet users know all of this.)
This tablet isn't as sensitive as Wacom's more elite models; it detects 1,024 levels of pressure which is VERY good for nearly any use, but the higher-end tablets support up to twice that. I'm an artist, though, and to be honest I haven't yet found the case where the difference has been critical. The tablet is lightweight and easy to hold or carry. The surface is a glassy-feeling plastic that feels natural; one criticism would be that it sense the pen too easily sometimes, so trying to carefully place the pen slowly to the surface might result in a "misfire" when the tablet reads it as intended pen action too soon.
For fun, there are a few games that come with it, but they're not impressive. Doodle on a world map; draw on the Mona Lisa; use the pen to play a rudimentary physics game...meh. Let's be honest: this is a "fun" tablet, but the games aren't actually why you'd want this. At the root of it, this is a tablet for people who want to do things a tablet will let them do (draw, design, and place design items) at a much more affordable price than the higher-end tablets. And once we settle on that, this does just fine. For those who want to do all of these things but don't have full-blown Photoshop, never fear--this includes Adobe "elements" (which does what most peopel need Photoshop to do, without the fancy extras), Corel Painter Essentials, and Autodesk Sketchbook Express. Between each of these, you have a fantastic range of filters, tools, and effects that work extremely well. I haven't had a single bug yet in Mac, and I've run this in Parallels 7 Windows XP on my Mac with fine results there, too. Be careful not to rely on writing-to-text, though; even though the tablet claims to offer this feature, it's not exactly accurate.
I ran this in Photoshop CS5 and found that is assimilates perfectly as a drawing tool--new users who are considering this shouldn't be the slightest bit concerned that incorporating a tablet into their Photoshop, Corel, etc. apps will be buggy or requires lots of advanced setup. Nope, it works just how you hope it will. (New users should be prepared for the "weird" sensation of drawing on a tablet while looking at a screen; a pen is not a mouse, and you can't lift and reposition it while maintaining stationary cursor placement like a mouse. The tablet is the equivalent to your screen. Advanced tablet users know all of this.)
This tablet isn't as sensitive as Wacom's more elite models; it detects 1,024 levels of pressure which is VERY good for nearly any use, but the higher-end tablets support up to twice that. I'm an artist, though, and to be honest I haven't yet found the case where the difference has been critical. The tablet is lightweight and easy to hold or carry. The surface is a glassy-feeling plastic that feels natural; one criticism would be that it sense the pen too easily sometimes, so trying to carefully place the pen slowly to the surface might result in a "misfire" when the tablet reads it as intended pen action too soon.
For fun, there are a few games that come with it, but they're not impressive. Doodle on a world map; draw on the Mona Lisa; use the pen to play a rudimentary physics game...meh. Let's be honest: this is a "fun" tablet, but the games aren't actually why you'd want this. At the root of it, this is a tablet for people who want to do things a tablet will let them do (draw, design, and place design items) at a much more affordable price than the higher-end tablets. And once we settle on that, this does just fine. For those who want to do all of these things but don't have full-blown Photoshop, never fear--this includes Adobe "elements" (which does what most peopel need Photoshop to do, without the fancy extras), Corel Painter Essentials, and Autodesk Sketchbook Express. Between each of these, you have a fantastic range of filters, tools, and effects that work extremely well. I haven't had a single bug yet in Mac, and I've run this in Parallels 7 Windows XP on my Mac with fine results there, too. Be careful not to rely on writing-to-text, though; even though the tablet claims to offer this feature, it's not exactly accurate.
276 of 292 people found the following review helpful
By neoREgen
Style Name:Capture Pen and Touch
Notice: The following review is based on using a 2009 white Macbook. The issues that I note with various touch input methods all worked fine with a friend's Macbook Air- except "natural" scrolling, which is still messed up as explained lower in the review. I assume then that if you have a Mac that natively accepts four-finger input via its trackpad that the touch input gestures of the Wacom Bamboo will work fine for you as well. (My computer natively only supports two-finger gestures, though the tablet augments that significantly to three and most of the four-fingered gestures.)
Review:
The hardware looks nicer than it does on the box (the box is darker and more muted than the product), but not quite the same coloration as is on Amazon's site or Wacom's site. In the online pictures it looks as if the buttons on the tablet are light grey/silverish, but they're definitively black in real life. The tablet's color online appears quite white, especially on the drawing surface, but it's grey. It looks like it'll blend in perfectly next to a Macbook Pro or Macbook Air. It's rather elegant.
The four buttons are interestingly not flat. Those little flavor indents in the picture are actual indents. Its a nice design touch, and actually kind of begs you to touch it more.
I was concerned about the newer "paperlike" feel that Wacom has updated all of its products to have, but it feels good. I actually liked the smooth plastic textureless gliding of my last tablet, and still might a little bit more, but I can already tell that this tablet's texture is entirely decent and I'll adapt to it rather painlessly.
It feels good on the fingers. Might not be as smooth as Apple's glasslike surfaces, but it's analogous to the trackpads Apple used before switching to glass.
Everything is responsive. The rotate feature can get a little weird with the pinch/zoom feature, not really knowing which one to apply, so I turned the rotate feature off in preferences. Oh- preferences for touch motions can't be configured in an "I want this to do X" sort of way. They have their intrinsic attributes and can only be toggled on and off.
It does a really good job at distinguishing between what I intend to be an input with my fingers or my pen. So if I lay my hand on it to use the pen- no problem, it gets it. You don't have to worry about toggling the finger-touch on and off.
Oh, by the way- there is approximately an inch's worth of margin on the top, right, and bottom of the usable tablet area. It appears to be quite a large surface, but a decent portion of that does nothing. I'm just eyeing it, but it looks like 6" x 4" worth of usable space, which doesn't sound like much to someone that hasn't used one, but I find to be a quite preferable size. I'd actually rather use a smaller tablet than larger. It's just a preference on how much you like to move as you draw- large sweeping strokes of the arm, or smaller subtler strokes of the wrist.
You might be surprised (as I was) to realize the pen doesn't have an eraser (as my previous, lesser Wacom tablet did).
I'm pretty sure you can't replace the pen with a better one as the driver software doesn't have any indication of the pen having an eraser end.
Honestly, not that big of a dilemma to me. You can program one of your six buttons (4 on the tablet, 2 on the pen) to switch to eraser tool if you want it anyway.
Four months in, my tablet stopped accepting input correctly and I contacted Wacom. The interaction with the customer service representative went very smoothly- no stupid questions asked (if you've ever talked to AT&T, you know what I mean). He sent me a pen immediately. (I did have to send him a copy of my receipt, via email- so hold on to those.) Three days later, it arrived and it works flawlessly. Pretty sure I have to send my old pen back on my dime, though. Oh, well. I'm still very pleased it wasn't the tablet itself that stopped working correctly.
-
When this tablet first came out, the driver software was a big issue for Lion compatibility. It has since (mostly) been fixed. The one extremely glaring flaw that still exists has to do with two finger scrolling. Wacom gives you two options: Natural and Standard. Standard is what is default on all Macs prior to OS X Lion- you move your fingers up, the page goes up. Move them left, it goes left.
Natural is, I presume, supposed to be what OS X Lion has as default scrolling functionality- similar to the iPad. You move your fingers up, the page goes down. Move them right, the page goes left. It's supposed to replicate dragging the page with your finger itself. Unfortunately, Wacom got it wrong in a really weird way - the left and right scrolling is identical to Standard mode. So you move your fingers up to scroll down, and left to scroll... left. Inversion-fail.
The four-finger swipe between spaces also exists in the preference pane, but doesn't work at all for me. Pity.
I'm sure they'll get around to fixing these oversights at some point. Ultimately though, the touch functionality that does exist makes this the most convenient line of Wacom tablets to use by far. Weighing this tablet with the current pro tablet - Intuos 4, I would probably choose this one for 9/10 tasks. Concept art and high quality painting or sketching would be the only project I'd prefer an Intuos 4 on at this point in time, due to the pen tilt functionality and extra pressure sensitivity.
The following issues with the driver software were fixed on Jan. 3rd, 2012. Check out Wacom's page to update your driver, and be pleased with the fact that your tablet is now very similar to an Apple Magic Trackpad, except with slightly less responsiveness and pen control:
a) Pinch/zoom had you pinching to make something bigger (while it oddly shows the zoom out magnifying glass) and vis versa.
b) The three-finger forward and back gestures were swapped, so Back is swipe right instead of left.
c) The four-finger gestures to show the desktop and to show Mission Control didn't work.
d) The left/right four-finger gesture didn't switch Spaces/fullscreen applications. Instead it brought up the Command + Tab application switcher panel.
---
Wacom has only allowed the keys and pen buttons for Bamboo tablets to be configured Globally, so you cannot create specific key commands per application.
Because this functionality is entirely software driven, it's omission is merely to provide an extra distinguishing factor between their consumer and pro lineups. If you want application specific button-mapping, you'll have to pay more for an Intuos 5 (available now at Wacom's page, probably shortly on amazon).
The Intuos 5 also boasts tilt/rotational pen controls, double the pressure sensitivity, a more ergonomic pen with an eraser, and more quick-access-buttons.
The button-mapping, by the way, can make your workflow considerably faster. It's a pity the drivers force you to reprogram your hot keys every time you want to switch applications though, especially since it's an unnecessary handicap.
-
The included CD stated on its packaging that it came with Corel Painter Essentials. It doesn't. It doesn't state that it does on the outside packaging or on any of the websites I've seen. It did get my hopes up for a second seeing that my disc claimed it did though. :P
And for some reason Autodesk SketchBook wouldn't install on my system. Don't know why.
-
Altogether- I like it, I'd recommend it, and it's got more bells and whistles than the last tablet I had. It remains to be seen how the tablet itself will hold up over the years. Due to the precedence of quality set by Wacom in the past, I would have assumed nothing other than rugged durability, but with my pen giving out after only 4 months, I'm a little more hesitant.
If you've never owned a tablet before, trust me. Tablets are amazing. They'll change the way you use your computer forever- for the better.
Review:
The hardware looks nicer than it does on the box (the box is darker and more muted than the product), but not quite the same coloration as is on Amazon's site or Wacom's site. In the online pictures it looks as if the buttons on the tablet are light grey/silverish, but they're definitively black in real life. The tablet's color online appears quite white, especially on the drawing surface, but it's grey. It looks like it'll blend in perfectly next to a Macbook Pro or Macbook Air. It's rather elegant.
The four buttons are interestingly not flat. Those little flavor indents in the picture are actual indents. Its a nice design touch, and actually kind of begs you to touch it more.
I was concerned about the newer "paperlike" feel that Wacom has updated all of its products to have, but it feels good. I actually liked the smooth plastic textureless gliding of my last tablet, and still might a little bit more, but I can already tell that this tablet's texture is entirely decent and I'll adapt to it rather painlessly.
It feels good on the fingers. Might not be as smooth as Apple's glasslike surfaces, but it's analogous to the trackpads Apple used before switching to glass.
Everything is responsive. The rotate feature can get a little weird with the pinch/zoom feature, not really knowing which one to apply, so I turned the rotate feature off in preferences. Oh- preferences for touch motions can't be configured in an "I want this to do X" sort of way. They have their intrinsic attributes and can only be toggled on and off.
It does a really good job at distinguishing between what I intend to be an input with my fingers or my pen. So if I lay my hand on it to use the pen- no problem, it gets it. You don't have to worry about toggling the finger-touch on and off.
Oh, by the way- there is approximately an inch's worth of margin on the top, right, and bottom of the usable tablet area. It appears to be quite a large surface, but a decent portion of that does nothing. I'm just eyeing it, but it looks like 6" x 4" worth of usable space, which doesn't sound like much to someone that hasn't used one, but I find to be a quite preferable size. I'd actually rather use a smaller tablet than larger. It's just a preference on how much you like to move as you draw- large sweeping strokes of the arm, or smaller subtler strokes of the wrist.
You might be surprised (as I was) to realize the pen doesn't have an eraser (as my previous, lesser Wacom tablet did).
I'm pretty sure you can't replace the pen with a better one as the driver software doesn't have any indication of the pen having an eraser end.
Honestly, not that big of a dilemma to me. You can program one of your six buttons (4 on the tablet, 2 on the pen) to switch to eraser tool if you want it anyway.
Four months in, my tablet stopped accepting input correctly and I contacted Wacom. The interaction with the customer service representative went very smoothly- no stupid questions asked (if you've ever talked to AT&T, you know what I mean). He sent me a pen immediately. (I did have to send him a copy of my receipt, via email- so hold on to those.) Three days later, it arrived and it works flawlessly. Pretty sure I have to send my old pen back on my dime, though. Oh, well. I'm still very pleased it wasn't the tablet itself that stopped working correctly.
-
When this tablet first came out, the driver software was a big issue for Lion compatibility. It has since (mostly) been fixed. The one extremely glaring flaw that still exists has to do with two finger scrolling. Wacom gives you two options: Natural and Standard. Standard is what is default on all Macs prior to OS X Lion- you move your fingers up, the page goes up. Move them left, it goes left.
Natural is, I presume, supposed to be what OS X Lion has as default scrolling functionality- similar to the iPad. You move your fingers up, the page goes down. Move them right, the page goes left. It's supposed to replicate dragging the page with your finger itself. Unfortunately, Wacom got it wrong in a really weird way - the left and right scrolling is identical to Standard mode. So you move your fingers up to scroll down, and left to scroll... left. Inversion-fail.
The four-finger swipe between spaces also exists in the preference pane, but doesn't work at all for me. Pity.
I'm sure they'll get around to fixing these oversights at some point. Ultimately though, the touch functionality that does exist makes this the most convenient line of Wacom tablets to use by far. Weighing this tablet with the current pro tablet - Intuos 4, I would probably choose this one for 9/10 tasks. Concept art and high quality painting or sketching would be the only project I'd prefer an Intuos 4 on at this point in time, due to the pen tilt functionality and extra pressure sensitivity.
The following issues with the driver software were fixed on Jan. 3rd, 2012. Check out Wacom's page to update your driver, and be pleased with the fact that your tablet is now very similar to an Apple Magic Trackpad, except with slightly less responsiveness and pen control:
a) Pinch/zoom had you pinching to make something bigger (while it oddly shows the zoom out magnifying glass) and vis versa.
b) The three-finger forward and back gestures were swapped, so Back is swipe right instead of left.
c) The four-finger gestures to show the desktop and to show Mission Control didn't work.
d) The left/right four-finger gesture didn't switch Spaces/fullscreen applications. Instead it brought up the Command + Tab application switcher panel.
---
Wacom has only allowed the keys and pen buttons for Bamboo tablets to be configured Globally, so you cannot create specific key commands per application.
Because this functionality is entirely software driven, it's omission is merely to provide an extra distinguishing factor between their consumer and pro lineups. If you want application specific button-mapping, you'll have to pay more for an Intuos 5 (available now at Wacom's page, probably shortly on amazon).
The Intuos 5 also boasts tilt/rotational pen controls, double the pressure sensitivity, a more ergonomic pen with an eraser, and more quick-access-buttons.
The button-mapping, by the way, can make your workflow considerably faster. It's a pity the drivers force you to reprogram your hot keys every time you want to switch applications though, especially since it's an unnecessary handicap.
-
The included CD stated on its packaging that it came with Corel Painter Essentials. It doesn't. It doesn't state that it does on the outside packaging or on any of the websites I've seen. It did get my hopes up for a second seeing that my disc claimed it did though. :P
And for some reason Autodesk SketchBook wouldn't install on my system. Don't know why.
-
Altogether- I like it, I'd recommend it, and it's got more bells and whistles than the last tablet I had. It remains to be seen how the tablet itself will hold up over the years. Due to the precedence of quality set by Wacom in the past, I would have assumed nothing other than rugged durability, but with my pen giving out after only 4 months, I'm a little more hesitant.
If you've never owned a tablet before, trust me. Tablets are amazing. They'll change the way you use your computer forever- for the better.
282 of 304 people found the following review helpful
Style Name:Create Pen and Touch|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
I need to say up front that this is my first tablet, so I have can not do a comparison between various tablets. I am not in the graphic design business although I dabble a little bit in graphic design and photo editing. It wasn't until I got this tablet that I realized how much easier certain editing tasks can be with the right tools.
First impressions:
The Bamboo Create is sleek and light-weight. It has a flat metallic finish with sleek, smooth black buttons on the side. The pen is a comfortable size for most size hands (large or small). The attached loop holder for the pen is a nice feature which reduces the chance of the pen being misplaced.
Features and Set-up:
It comes packaged with Corel Painter Essentials, Autodesk Sketchbook Express, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0 WE3, as well as some special offer freebies such as a free Shutterfly photo book. It features training videos for Photoshop Elements and Corel Painter Essentials. The Bamboo Dock allows you to access various apps for the Bamboo tablet.
The power cord is a removable micro usb to usb cable. This can be upgraded by purchasing the wireless accessory kit which is a nice option if you want to have freedom from the cable or if you use your tv as your computer monitor.
A huge plus for us is the fact that this tablet can be configured (on the fly) for either left-handed or right-handed users. Since we have both in our home, we really appreciate this particular feature. The buttons on the tablet as well as the pen can be customized and configured to your desired settings.
The active use area is 8.5 X 5.4 inches and works with both touch and pen input. Once again, this can be configured to you desired specs.
The initial set-up as well as software install was extremely easy. While you can just plug in and use, you will not have full features unless you install the software. The bundled software was a nice addition to overall package.
Ease of Use:
Because we had never used a tablet, we weren't sure how easy it would be to use this tool. We quickly found it was pretty intuitive. Obviously, some programs have more of a learning curve than others, but the tablet itself is easy to use. It will take some time to get use to the exact amount of pressure needed to perform certain tasks.
As with any writing to text input, some translation errors are to be expected. We had a few laughs over some of the words created when we wrote on the tablet. It's too early to say how often this errors would happen when writing on a regular basis. Because this is primarily being targeted as a creative tool rather than a business tool, this may not be a critical issue.
Where this tablet shines is when it comes to drawing, artist renderings, photo editing... basically, the creative side of things. Both my husband and daughter were extremely pleased at the sketches they were able to create. The ease of drawing and also erasing was wonderful. The tablet/pen responded well to lighter and heavier pressure just as a pen and paper would in real life. My daughter really liked the ability to erase cleaning which is not always possible with real sketches depending on the medium used to create the sketches.
As someone who dabbles in photography, I could quickly see how using this tablet will help greatly with photo editing where a mouse falls completely short. I'm looking forward to being able to make more precise edits as well as doing some more create editing with this new tool. This tablet also opens the door to more graphic design possibilities.
Final Thoughts:
As a new user in the tablet market, the Bamboo Create meets all of our criteria and then some. It's a tool that can be used by all family members and will be a great asset in our homeschool setting. The photo editing possibilities that come from the precision that comes with this tool are endless. We did find that occasionally there was some lag in input or it didn't register the input. I'm not sure if this is user error or just the nature of the tablet. If other things come to light, I will update this review to reflect them. As it stands, we all feel this is a great product with multiple uses for a variety of age groups.
First impressions:
The Bamboo Create is sleek and light-weight. It has a flat metallic finish with sleek, smooth black buttons on the side. The pen is a comfortable size for most size hands (large or small). The attached loop holder for the pen is a nice feature which reduces the chance of the pen being misplaced.
Features and Set-up:
It comes packaged with Corel Painter Essentials, Autodesk Sketchbook Express, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0 WE3, as well as some special offer freebies such as a free Shutterfly photo book. It features training videos for Photoshop Elements and Corel Painter Essentials. The Bamboo Dock allows you to access various apps for the Bamboo tablet.
The power cord is a removable micro usb to usb cable. This can be upgraded by purchasing the wireless accessory kit which is a nice option if you want to have freedom from the cable or if you use your tv as your computer monitor.
A huge plus for us is the fact that this tablet can be configured (on the fly) for either left-handed or right-handed users. Since we have both in our home, we really appreciate this particular feature. The buttons on the tablet as well as the pen can be customized and configured to your desired settings.
The active use area is 8.5 X 5.4 inches and works with both touch and pen input. Once again, this can be configured to you desired specs.
The initial set-up as well as software install was extremely easy. While you can just plug in and use, you will not have full features unless you install the software. The bundled software was a nice addition to overall package.
Ease of Use:
Because we had never used a tablet, we weren't sure how easy it would be to use this tool. We quickly found it was pretty intuitive. Obviously, some programs have more of a learning curve than others, but the tablet itself is easy to use. It will take some time to get use to the exact amount of pressure needed to perform certain tasks.
As with any writing to text input, some translation errors are to be expected. We had a few laughs over some of the words created when we wrote on the tablet. It's too early to say how often this errors would happen when writing on a regular basis. Because this is primarily being targeted as a creative tool rather than a business tool, this may not be a critical issue.
Where this tablet shines is when it comes to drawing, artist renderings, photo editing... basically, the creative side of things. Both my husband and daughter were extremely pleased at the sketches they were able to create. The ease of drawing and also erasing was wonderful. The tablet/pen responded well to lighter and heavier pressure just as a pen and paper would in real life. My daughter really liked the ability to erase cleaning which is not always possible with real sketches depending on the medium used to create the sketches.
As someone who dabbles in photography, I could quickly see how using this tablet will help greatly with photo editing where a mouse falls completely short. I'm looking forward to being able to make more precise edits as well as doing some more create editing with this new tool. This tablet also opens the door to more graphic design possibilities.
Final Thoughts:
As a new user in the tablet market, the Bamboo Create meets all of our criteria and then some. It's a tool that can be used by all family members and will be a great asset in our homeschool setting. The photo editing possibilities that come from the precision that comes with this tool are endless. We did find that occasionally there was some lag in input or it didn't register the input. I'm not sure if this is user error or just the nature of the tablet. If other things come to light, I will update this review to reflect them. As it stands, we all feel this is a great product with multiple uses for a variety of age groups.
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WoW. Enough said? This pen tablet is a breeze to use. And it has a lot of free programs to use to make the experience a great one. Very easy to setup and go!
Published 17 hours ago by Bob F.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Works like dream
Tablet is just what I needed for my personal graphic work. I know a lot of people say I should get the more pricy model, but this is really good to get my feet wet. Read more
Published 1 day ago by Malissa Mackey
3.0 out of 5 stars
Somewhat disappointed
As of this writing, the latest driver for the Windows 7 Bamboo Create (dated Jan 23 2013) does NOT allow Inking in Word 2013. It works wonderfully in OneNote 2013. Read more
Published 1 day ago by NickF
4.0 out of 5 stars
capture
great device..my daughter loves it..good for the up and coming budding artist in the family and a great starting point.
Published 2 days ago by kirk
5.0 out of 5 stars
Love It!!!
This is my first drawing tablet, but I compared it to my friends tablet(a different version from wacom) and I definitely thought this one was better overall. Read more
Published 2 days ago by Elizabeth
5.0 out of 5 stars
Makes photo editing so much easier
I use this tablet with Photoshop Elements and it makes editing a breeze. Removing things from images has never been easier, basically a pen stroke and its done including some... Read more
Published 2 days ago by A. Craig
5.0 out of 5 stars
All I can say is I Like it very Much Maybe even Love it...
I ordered this one because I have a Windows 8 Laptop and since some products wont work on my laptop I figured I would go with the better chanced option for the money. Read more
Published 3 days ago by Connmom
5.0 out of 5 stars
Works as advertised
So far I have only used it for taking notes and simple sketches on Onenote. Although it takes a while to get used to writing while looking at a screen, writing is almost like... Read more
Published 3 days ago by R. Vega
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