Customer Reviews

Wacom DTK2100 21-Inch Pen Display - Graphics Monitor with Digital Pen

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The new 21UX (DTK-2100) is AWESOME!

Not only is it a nice looking device, but I could swear it sports a new LCD panel too (something that critics have panned about the new model as lacking... 5 year old technology, etc. I don't believe it). The firmware / OSD is definitely different, but the screen also seems a lot sharper with much better contrast, and without the washout issues that all the older 21UXs I've used before have exhibited. The new body has a texture similar to the 12wx, kind of a pebbled matte black. The new buttons are cool too, and them putting the touchstrips on the back like the 20wsx is also killer (no more hitting them with the side of your hand as you brush over them). The touch strip function toggle button is a great idea too. Overall, it's definitely a step up. I'm mixed about the lack of OLED labels for the buttons. While it would be "cool" for them to be there, I don't think it's as necessary as it is on the Intuos4, as you can tell what button you have your finger on without looking at it, since they're all angled in a unique way relative to each other. Of course, there's also the new digitizer. Can I tell it's got twice the pressure sensitivity? Well, for most of what I use it for (Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Maya, ZBrush), I can't, but I can tell you that it does take a lot less pressure to get pixels flowing from the tip. The new stylus and stylus holder (with nib storage) are nice too!

Of all the Cintiqs I've played with over the years (18sx, 21ux, 20wsx, 12wx), this new 21UX definitely has the best first impression. I used a 21UX at work for years (both the original and the upgraded versions), and I never was interested in having one at home, mainly because of the screen contrast and color inaccuracy problems (the fact that the ones at work were on 24-7 for 4+ years probably didn't help them at all). All in all, in my opinion, this version is a huge improvement. I like it.

I never thought I could justify paying this much money for a pressure sensitive display--but I did, and I absolutely love it!

For years I have been looking at the Cintiq, wondering how "good" is it. Several months ago I thought I would give it a try--but then I decided to wait because I felt a new version would be coming out this year. When I read that it had--I ordered one, telling myself that if it wasn't very good I would send it back. I'm not sending it back--it's great!

I have been using an Intuos3 tablet for years, and while I can draw reasonably well with it I still found myself frustrated at times. I have a pressure sensitive laptop but the screen is small and the calibration and sensitivity isn't that good. That is why I didn't even consider purchasing the smaller 12-inch Cintiq.

Why I love this Cintiq:

1. The calibration of the stylus is very good. I do notice that when I get to the extreme edges of the screen (to open and close palettes or windows) the calibration is off--but otherwise, everything in the area I use to draw in is accurate. My laptop would drive me crazy because the calibration on that would often be off and it was extremely frustrating.

2. The screen is large and I can have several palettes open and still have my image at a relatively large size. I also have a 22-inch regular monitor set up as a secondary monitor and while I can use that I found over the last couple weeks that when I'm drawing or painting this 21-inch Cintiq is enough space. I do like the "Display toggle" on the Cintiq. This is how it works--when I push the display toggle button on the Cintiq I can use the stylus on the Cintiq to move my cursor onto the other monitor. I know that probably doesn't explain it very well. It's one of those things you have to actually do or see to fully understand it. The bottom line is that you can use the Cintiq and the stylus to move your cursor over the entire space of two monitors.

3. The sensitivity of the pen just feels right! It really feels like I am drawing right on the surface. The first time I used the airbrush in Painter XI I felt like I had merged into a virtual world. It actually seemed like the spray was shooting out of the tip of the stylus!

4. It tilts is so many ways I can easily get the angle or the slant I need.

5. It works great as a primary monitor even when you are not drawing or painting with it. I was concerned that the tilt might not be tall enough--but it is. I was also concerned because I read a review that said the screen would be darker and not as bright as a typical monitor. I haven't noticed this at all.

At first I found the different buttons on the Cintiq useful--but over the last couple weeks I found myself using standard keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop more than the buttons.

The driver for this Cintiq works with the Intuos3 tablet as well--so it is possible to have both hooked up if you want. I first removed the old Intuos 3 driver and installed the Cintiq. After that I merely plugged in my Intuos 3 and it worked. I used both tablets for the first two weeks because using the Intuos3 allowed me to quickly navigate both my monitors (something I was used to doing). However, a couple times I got an error message with the tablet software and ended up disconnecting the Intuos3. Plus I found that I didn't really need the Intuos3 anymore and removing it freed up a lot of space on my desk!

I'm a bit embarrassed to write this, but the second night I was using it I actually felt my eyes watering up with tears of joy! $2000 is a lot of money. To justify spending this much on me--I just sent a generous check to a worthy charity.

I think this is the longest review I have written. Perhaps that is appropriate because this is the most expensive item I have purchased from Amazon!

I agree with the general consensus of many artists and art publications' reviews of this product. It is a great product, but overpriced at $2000. I give this product only 4-stars because of the high price, average monitor quality, average resolution, finicky drivers, and at least one noticeable dead pixel within the 1st week.

As a long time TabletPC owner and user I already knew I could get the speed benefits of being able to work directly on screen. What I didn't have was the CPU power of my desktop backing up demanding programs like CS4 and Painter. This second generation cintiq has finally given me the best of both worlds, but at a tremendous price. Personally, I think a fair price for this product is at $1000-1200, but I suppose everything is worth what a buyer will pay for it and I caved in.

As an amateur artist I spend about 8 hours a week drawing, 3D modeling, or painting, but don't have the color accuracy demands as the pros. People have said that the screen is bland and lacks vibrancy and contrast. To my untrained eyes, I feel it's fine with excellent viewing angles, but it's not as sharp as my Samsung 204T. For the physical size of this tablet the resolution should be in the 1920x1200 area, but it's adequate for my needs at 1600x1200.

The cintiq 21ux is large and heavy to lift. Once mounted on the sturdy stand though it is easy to manipulate and rotate. I think Wacom did a good job on mounting this hefty tablet. The back legs of the stand have rollers which allow me to easily push it to the rear of the desk when I'm not drawing to save desk space (which you'll need a lot of to use this). Note that the stand cannot present the tablet at a true vertical nor can the 21UX sit perfectly flat on a desk without the stand.

While I love Wacom technology I feel their drivers have progressively become more "challenging" to use. On Windows 7 64-bit the product installed fine with the latest drivers, but every once in a while the system will cease to recognize the cintiq on startup. The screen will be present but the pen will not respond. This apparently is not uncommon and some hunting on the interwebs yielded an unintuitive solution - remove your preferences using the control panel. This works and no functionality is lost, but annoying to have to do at all. Hopefully future drivers will eliminate this issue. YMMV.

The Cintiq surface can get rather warm after about an hour or so worth of use. All monitors get warm though (we just don't touch monitors usually) so I'm not seeing this as a defect but it can be uncomfortable. The heating seems uneven though and I can deflect the problem by rotating the hotter surfaces away from my work hand.

All-in-all it's changed the way I work and is something to experience even after 7 years of working on TabletPCs. It's improved my work from the stand point of being about to use my quad core desktop to keep up with the demands of today's monstrous graphics programs. The large size is worth it if you can afford it.

I've been using the cintiq now for six months. Switched from twenty years of pencil and paper. Learning the software (painter 11) and how to draw on the screen was six months of steep-learning-curve-misery--and I'm no computer noob. But that's not the cintiq's fault. Now that I've made the adjustment, I wouldn't go back to the old way.

The cintiq does what it says it will. It gets a little warm after eight hours of constant use. So far it has held up to the punishment of a professional illustrator's work load. I have mine on a positionable arm so that I can swing it into my lap. It is NOT suitable as a primary display. A page of word-processor text will appear 'soft'. But it is fine for drawing. I use the cintiq as one of three monitors, the cintiq for drawing and two others for photo references, email, etc. After six months, i have put one scratch on the surface, not sure how. Otherwise it stands up to me using plastic rulers, circle templates, etc, without problem. (I asked Wacom before doing so and they said plastic rulers were okay).

My only fear at this point is that I have become so dependant on the cintiq that if it goes down, I'll be in a pickle. my clients like the digital style and don't want the pencil style anymore.

Not sure how many hours I'll get out of the cintiq. Maybe I'll have to buy a second one as a backup...

:)

Ivan Cat, storyboard artist.

I'm a concept artist for film and games, so as a profession, sorta need this thing - cost doesnt become an issue when u consider its like a photographer buying their own camera equipment.

The new 21 UX is great to deal with. One of the reasons why i did not pick up the previous model is 1) heat - got warm and sweaty, 2) contrast ratio - everything was grayish, 3) corners were not perfectly aligned to the pen.

So I held off and bought a smaller 12 inch cintiq for use. But man, that small one got me hunched over it, and the real estate is WAY to small for my photoshop needs. I'm an artist, i'm used to drawing on 18x30 newsprint. After 2 years of use, tons of felt nubs, and my aching back from poor posture, the 21 UX came out, and the office got one for me to use. It was a world of difference that i decided to pick one up for home use/freelance work. all problems mentioned above are either reduced greatly or not there in this new model :D

EVERYWHERE is SOLD OUT THOUGH... not even WACOM, whom i mailed, had any in stock and IN fact they replied, letting me know that they won't be shipping directly from their site due to unfilled backorders with other clients (ie best buy CDW etc). Considering a variety of entertainment studios pick them up in bulk, it was hard to get one to a single person in teh suburbs.

I ordered through Amazon because of price, and because i'm on their prime membership - 3 bux for next day woo woo. Amazon said anywhere between 2-3 months to ship - i was ok with that. Surprisingly tho, it shipped within 3 weeks! was not mentally prepared yet for the 2K of money being sucked out of my account... but nonetheless, it was nice getting it sooner than expected :)

thumbs up on amazon for best price and best shipping.

I'm not really a tablet guy but finally decided to invest in something that'll let me draw digitally. I've tried using Intuous/etc. products before but never liked how I had to adapt my hand coordination to a cursor up on the screen -- very non-intuitive.

The Cintiq solves this problem quite well, I'm very happy with how it feels to draw on it and how accurately it works (with simple calibration). Next to my Apple Cinema 24" display, the Cintiq does not measure up at all in terms of screen quality. It's extremely dim in comparison (come on Wacom, if you're going to release a new version of $2k hardware then use an LED screen!).

I find the hardware menu system extremely confusing. Luckily I don't plan on using it much, as I can rely on the Apple monitor for color accuracy.

The button layout is definitely better than the old version. The pen continues to be a little too easy to accidentally push a button on while you draw, but this just takes a little time to adapt. Sensitivity is pretty nice, though I wish there was more of a curve control rather than a single number controlling sensitivity. I sometimes with I could make a light stroke with more ease, instead I kind of wrestle between having to push too-hard for heavy strokes and the other extreme.

The touch strip on the back is absolutely worthless. In photoshop I was trying to use it to zoom, and my zoom would just go all over the place. The program didn't respond to this kind of input well because the strip is basically just hooked up with a hotkey, so if you slide across it it basically floods Photoshop with ZOOM IN ZOOM IN ZOOM IN ZOOM OUT ZOOM IN. I'm baffled that they haven't worked out a better way to interface with the most popular application of this hardware...

The stand works well, though you can't really rotate "as designed" unless you lower it to almost horizontal (parallel with the table) position. I've opted to mount mine on an Ergotron LX arm instead, and this works TERRIFICALLY, I really recommend it.

The software they give you isn't too exciting, some of the included brushes are decent but I guess I expected a bit more for this much money. I look forward to the day when I can zoom and edit brush size with finger gestures and draw with the pen at the same time -- seems like the technology is already there for Wacom, they just need to put two and two together.

Overall, despite some design misfires, I think this is a great purchase for anyone who plans to do a significant amount of tablet work.

About two years ago I purchased a TC1100 tablet PC and found that drawing on the screen not only improved productivity but it also made it easier to make better artwork. I design lapel pins with famous cartoon characters at my day job, and almost all of the illustrators ended up buying one. This made an impression on the CEO, so he bought everyone Cintiq monitors for use at the company. Now these were the previous model, and I'm going to say that while having the big screen itself made a huge difference beyond the tablet pc, I bought this DTK2100 for myself and it much more powerful than the previous model.
First of all - the buttons. More buttons = better. You WILL use them. It makes drawing in Sketchbook Pro and inking drawings in Adobe Illustrator so much faster and efficient its just mind boggling. Plus, when you register the Monitor with Wacom they let you in on discount software with their partners - one of which is Sketchbook so I bought the latest version of that (only like $50 with the discount) and that coupled with the DOUBLE sensitivity this has over the previous model is just... night and day. I mean the tools feel much more like the real thing because of the resistance when you use a pencil vs a paintbrush vs a ink pen tool - its just awesome.
I can wait to get home from work everyday to use this thing and end up denying myself sleep on a regular basis because I just cant get enough - I feel so motivated and inspired.
If you are debating between getting this and the older version to save $200 or so - Dont do it! You would be cheating yourself out of this awesome equipment. And if you still use a lightbox you need to get out of the stoneage. I'm glad I did.

For the past 8 years, I've dreamed about owning one of these. Finally, my family said "Go for it, Pops." And, it's even better than I expected. So, I'll eat beans for a year...

I'll be as objective and as fair as i can be. I used this product for 4 months in a professional environment. It serves great to give a slight increase in speed over Intous. Other than that there is really no significant benefit to it. Although sped up production is a significant variable, i don't feel that it justifies the price tag.

The screen feels very outdated and low resolution compared to even the budget monitors you can buy today. Poor color in a 1600X1200 matrix stretched over 21" monitor is not something you want to be looking at while in drawing position. Especially in year 2010. I found myself constantly moving the window over to the other monitor to see what the colors would look like on a modern monitor.

Personally i would never pay $2,000 for this product in its current form. Maybe with ultra high density screen capable of higher resolution and significantly more vibrant colors.

Like other reviewers i don't understand why we don't see more competitors to this.

This is an excellent product, Period. I have an imac, so i purchased the necessary dvi converter for 25 bucks and low and behold it works like a charm. the $100 converter from apple is not necessary. a side note: once everything is hooked up and you turn your computer and tablet off for the first time, before you go to bed or whatever, the next time you turn them on to work, be sure to turn on the computer first and then your monitor, otherwise the computer wont detect your pen when you start working....again, I have an imac. and i can only attest to my experience with the imac. I have been painting and drawing traditionally for the past 12 years, so adding this tablet as a working tool is a very natural conversion to the world of digital painting. set the thing up, buy a $2 pair of cotton gloves, cut off finger tips except for the pinky, and you are good to go.

I had read complaints that the screen is too dim. I realized that these people probably work in super bright environments. I found the settings out of the box to be good but slightly too bright for me. I work in low-light conditions and calibrated both my tablet and my mac, so that i can print with relatively accurate results. If you buy a calibrator (which you should), make sure it has dual-monitor capabilities. I bought the spyder3 elite. Let it be known, that painting without properly calibrated monitors is like driving blind folded.

much to my dismay, i had issues using photoshop cs5. i experienced some lag and "bugginess" with the brush tool. I have cs4 also, so i tried that and experienced zero issues. I concluded that the problem may be a cs5 software issue. I have corel painter 11, and using the natural media pencils, brushes, etc, practically brought a tear to my eye.....an absolute joy! This product does what it is designed to do, and it does it extremely well.

The thing is built like a rock. quality. the stand it rests on is fantastic. i personally work on it "eisel style" and I calibrated it at this angle as well. you lose full range of rotational mobility if you have the tablet upright, but the whole thing can easily and rapidly by reclined to obtain full mobility. parallax is not a big deal. you get used to it. the screen is meant to be drawn on, so dont be afraid to dig into it for pressure changing strokes. it wont scratch, unless you use something other than the prescribed pen, which would just be dumb anyways. you can also use plastic templates and rulers on the screen. (just make sure they are clean before doing this). No dead pixels out of the box for me. I am lucky, because this happens (usually on the side of the screen)....its called the nature of the materials. dont let that deter you from getting one. just expect one or two, and if you dont end up with any, then its like serendipity. I am personally glad this tablet doesnt have touch screen functions....it is a painting/drawing demon. you can be totally fearless with your expression and application.

I would conclude, that anyone who draws or paints seriously, and would like to make the conversion digitally, should own one of these. Be sure to do your research, so you know exactly what you are getting, and most likely you will be thrilled.