Wacom Bamboo Fun Tablet

by Wacom

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 13.3 x 8.8 x 0.2 inches ; 1.6 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B002OOWC4C
• Item model number: CTH661
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (154 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #37 in Electronics > Computers & Add-Ons > Computer Accessories > Keyboards, Mice & Input Devices > Graphics Tablets
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 24, 2009

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Combining intuitive design and versatility, the Bamboo Fun is a powerful creative workstation that lets PC and Mac users create digital art with an organic, hands-on feel. Using an innovative tablet and Wacom's "Multi-Touch" system, users can manipulate images and navigate the Web using simple gestures and finger taps. When combined with Wacom's pen-input technology, the Bamboo Fun allows you to write, doodle, and embellish with ease.

Included pen features 1,024 levels of pressure sensitivity for precise drawings.

Large, textured work surface and customizable keys give you artistic control.

Multi-Touch lets you scroll, zoom, and rotate your screen with simple hand gestures.

Sleek, Stylish, and Easy to Use
Measuring 13.3 by 8.8 inches, the Bamboo Fun is compact enough to store comfortably in a laptop case. It features a large and responsive active area, providing enough workspace for even your most ambitious projects. For added convenience, four ExpressKeys provide quick access to user-defined shortcuts.

The tablet comes with a battery-free pen with an easy-to-grip design, so you can have maximum control over your drawing. The work surface is textured, providing a pen-on-paper feel. It's also reversible, so you can use it comfortably whether you're right- or left-handed.

The Bamboo Fun is simple to set up. Simply plug the tablet into your computer via a USB port, install the provided drivers, and you're ready to go. You'll be doodling, writing, and painting in minutes.

Enhance Creativity with Multi-Touch Technology
With the Bamboo Fun, Wacom has implemented a new technology called Multi-Touch. Typically, tablets require you to use the stylus for navigation, but Multi-Touch provides a comfortable hands-on alternative. It allows you to quickly navigate through your computer with a single finger. You can also scroll, zoom, and rotate your screen with simple hand gestures. It's intuitively-designed and easy to use -- even if you're new to the touch experience.

For precision work, you can use the included pen. When you use the pen, the screen will automatically recalibrate for more precise use. In your hands, the pen quickly becomes an all-purpose art tool. It features 1,024 levels of pressure sensitivity, allowing you to perform tasks ranging from fine hand-writing to wide-brush painting. You can add hand-drawn embellishments to your favorite photos, add life to your digital sketches, or provide a personal touch to your scrapbooking pages.

First-Class Visual Editing Software
The tablet also comes with a full suite of visual editing software, including Adobe Photoshop Elements 7.0 Win/6.0 Mac and Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0 WE3--valued separately at several hundred dollars.

Bamboo Fun is compatible with Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP (Service Pack 2) and Mac OS X (10.4.8 or higher.) It requires a powered USB drive, a colored screen, and a CD/DVD drive.

What's in the Box
Bamboo Fun tablet, Bamboo Fun pen, Quick Start guide, installation CD (includes driver software, interactive tutorial and user's manual), and software DVD.

Product Description

Bamboo Fun lets you get hands-on with your creative projects, giving you the benefits of Multi-Touch along with the comfort and precision of Wacom’s ergonomically-designed pen. With Multi-Touch, you can navigate, scroll, and work with simple gestures in an area larger than on mobile devices or laptop trackpads. For precision work, pick up the pressure-sensitive pen to draw, sketch, edit photos, and add handwritten elements to your creations. The generous size of Bamboo Fun gives you lots of space for creative freedom, making it simple and comfortable to use. Bamboo Fun works with your existing computer: desktop or laptop, PC or Mac. Attach it to a standard USB port and set it comfortably by your keyboard. You can even customize your Bamboo Fun experience by assigning your own shortcuts to the four ExpressKeys. Available in a stylish silver color, Bamboo Fun will complement your current setup. It includes valuable additions that make it ideal for your creative projects.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

250 of 252 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Lower your expectations and you'll be fine, July 25, 2010

By 

C. Moore "The Authorguy" (Hawaii) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Wacom Bamboo Fun Tablet (Personal Computers)

I've owned a pen-only Wacom tablet before and I think they make good products, but if you get this one you should be aware of several points that I didn't figure out until I started using this one, although, to be fair, there were indications to some problems on the web, I just sort of flaked in my research.

1)The Draw: The drawing and pen functions with the pad are terrific, and unless you're used to high-end tablets, this will probably be fine for you, although the surface is rougher than the older, pen-only tablets and I suspect will wear out nibs fairly quickly. They supply you with three extras.

2)The Touch: While the touch on this, even the "tap to click" works pretty well, I'm not able to use it full time as my interface -- I still use a Logitech track ball. If you're used to one of the glass touchpads on a Macbook or Macbook pro, this will seem a bit sluggish, but if you're used to the trackpad supplied with many netbooks (Like my Dell mini)this thing will be a revelation. Overall it's nice.(There are scrolling issues, see below.) The mouse buttons have a nice, smooth feel, too. Not too clicky, but not so soft you don't know you're pushing them. Mind you, this is after just two days of use. I have no idea about the durability.

3)The Size: This is the larger of the Bamboo Fun tablets. While it should have been blindingly obvious, I suppose, that this was going to be big, it really does take up a lot of room on the desktop. To use it as a touch interface, it's really more than you need. There may people who need the extra space for graphics, but for day-to-day use, the smaller Bamboo Fun or Bamboo Craft touch/pen would have been fine. I'm working on two, 24 inch monitors and this is still way more space than I need. This is about the size of a 13inch laptop, so unless you have room for something that size on your desk all the time, in addition to your keyboard, the smaller Bamboo might be the way to go.

4)The Scroll: The two-fingered scroll function works great until it doesn't. I kept getting a lock up after a couple of swipes in Firefox 3.6, and even my trackball's scrolling would lock for fifteen seconds or so after it locked. This was fixed by turning off the auto-scroll and smooth-scrolling IN FIREFOX. That said, I found that solution in a forum where many people had reported scrolling problems and this fix didn't work for all of them. They also reported similar issues in Photoshop CS2 & CS3 as well. I'm using this with a Mac Pro 2x Xenon processor with 8GB ram, but people with Windows machines reported the problem as well. Wacom didn't seem to address it on their web page other than to respond to users that it, more or less, was the user's fault. I haven't tried it with Photoshop yet, but it seems to work fine in Painter and Art Rage Studio Pro, and I haven't had any scroll problems with the pen, only the touch functions. Your mileage may vary, but I'd be wary of expecting to use this as your only interface until you see a lot of "fixes" reported on the web.

5)The Design: It looks very spiffy, especially if you like the brushed-aluminum look and feel. It's substantial, too - heavy enough to stay in place on the desk. There's a loop for the pen to go into, which is a nice addition my earlier Wacom didn't have. (I use stick-on Velcro to keep the pen attached to that one.)As other's have said, though, the USB cable is permanently attached to the tablet instead of plugging in with a mini-USB plug, as earlier models did. This could become a durability problem if you travel with the tablet a lot, as the connection point isn't very heavily reinforced.

6)In Conclusion: You are more or less in a one-player game. For the price, you can't really get a pen pad with touch from anyone except Wacom, and if this is your first tablet, again, I think you'll probably love it, but do look at the smaller touch/pen tablet first, maybe save yourself some cash, and expect to keep your mouse around for a while, at least, until you iron out any touch navigation problems that you may have with your particular applications.

167 of 169 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic tablet for the money!, October 20, 2009

By 

Meghan (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wacom Bamboo Fun Tablet (Personal Computers)

I spent quite a bit of time looking at various tablets, reading reviews, and trying to figure out which had the most bang for the buck; the Bamboo Fun won in just about every category. Please note that I am not a professional graphic artist, just a hobbyist (though technically savvy enough to understand the features [eg pressure sensitivity]), so I'm reviewing it from that perspective.

Installation was a snap. Download the latest drivers from the Wacom site, plug it into a USB port, and you're all set. I tried it out on two laptops and a desktop and installation was flawless on each.

The tablet is thin and light, with a more-than-adequate amount of active space (I wanted something that would let me do longer strokes without feeling cramped). The multi-touch capability is really nice with graphics programs that support it; being able to pan and zoom with my left hand while my right remains mostly dedicated to drawing is great (and a quick press of one of the Bamboo's 4 buttons will turn touch off, which comes in handy [no pun intended]). For reference, the touch-sensitive area is 7.5" x 5.1" and the pen-active area is a fairly generous 8.5" x 5.4". You can configure it for left-handed use (lefties rejoice!).

The tablet is very smooth and responsive with Sketchbook Pro and ArtRage 2.5. I wasn't that thrilled with Corel Painter 4 Essentials, which comes bundled with it; the UI was clunky and not very intuitive (spend the $20 on ArtRage instead - you won't regret it). The Bamboo Fun also comes bundled with Photoshop Essentials, which should be useful if you don't already have a full version of Photoshop.

The battery-less pen, with two configurable buttons and 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity, is very comfortable in the hand and I admit it, I love the eraser on the end. :) The tablet has a fabric loop on one side for holding the pen when transporting it.

The tablet comes with three extra nibs and an extraction tool, which isn't listed in the product description.

Overall, for a couple of steps above entry level I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the Bamboo Fun as a great tablet for the price.

530 of 555 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Something for everyone, perfect for no one, October 23, 2009

By 

Doctor.Generosity (New England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Wacom Bamboo Fun Tablet (Personal Computers)

(What's this?)

This review will be most helpful to someone who is relatively unfamiliar with graphics tablets, as I was before selecting this item for review.

Other than the keyboard, the mouse is the most universal computer control device. But trying to draw with a mouse is clumsy. Pen type drawing tablets were invented to offer a more natural input device for any bitmapped graphics programs such as photo retouching and freehand art applications. The other popular input device, generally found on notebooks, is the trackpad, which works directly with your fingers. Recent Apple MacBook trackpads offer two finger stretching and rotating and other fancy tricks. Some people would like to use this method with their desktop computer; Bamboo Fun is in part a giant trackpad that allows you to do that.

Before buying it, be aware that Wacom, the largest producer of such things, offers many different products and variants at many price points. These range from large pen-only tablets for professional graphic artists ($430) down to small "amateur" tablets with reduced spatial resolution and pressure resolution, for sixty bucks. There are versions with only the track-pad mode, only the pen mode, or both. The product reviewed here ($169) is a bundle which puts together several things at the sub-professional level. The device does both the track-pad and pen modes, is medium size, and the package includes bundled software: Photoshop Elements (the non-pro version of Photoshop, normally $90), Corel Painter Essentials (the non-pro version of Painter, $40) and a program called Nik Color Efex. (The latter is tossed in but doesn't really belong here; it's a set of advanced filters and tricks which work under Photoshop and would normally be used by advanced photographers. But quite expensive if bought alone.) Bundles like this are questionable. If you really use all this software, it's a bargain. But if you are a serious photographer, you probably already have full Photoshop, so Elements is superfluous. Receiving Corel Painter Essentials was a nice surprise however - it's a lovely, fun program which can do things such as turn photos into simulated oil paintings.

Let's talk about the tablet function. One quickly becomes habituated to using the mouse so changing to any other device takes a lot of relearning. The utility of changing to a trackpad with two finger options has a lot to do with the type of software you are working in; for most everyday applications there is not much to be gained. For sorting photos in Aperture, yes, could be quicker after some practice. And, let's face it, having the trackpad made by a third party (that is, not the computer maker nor the software maker) inevitably means that it may or may not all work together smoothly. So a big trackpad like this is ends up a highly personal preference - you will love it or hate it, not in-between. But it would be hard to say it is 'absolutely necessary' for any particular task.

The pen function is a different story. Freehand drawing programs or Photoshop effects cannot be manipulated easily with a mouse - you really need the pen, which is pressure sensitive and can be adjusted in many ways. This one worked well, and makes Corel Painter or Photoshop much easier to use with precision.

It all works, but who is this product really for? As noted, the Bamboo Fun package throws in a bit of everything in nonprofessional versions. But for a 'sampler,' the $170 price is not really cheap. To be worth the price, you will want to be sure that you need both the trackpad and the pen functions, plus the bundled software. I suspect there are few customers who fall in this category. Most graphics-oriented buyers will know what they intend to do. If you only want the pen function for example, you may be better off spending about the same money to get the high performance, higher res professional version of this one Wacom item (called Intuos line). This would probably be my own choice; a top grade pen for Photoshop and skip the rest.

This Bamboo Fun package might be a good option for a school or family with a variety of different users. But a focussed artist with a specific task in mind will do better to choose a more specialized Wacom product.