Customer Reviews

Wacom Graphire3 6x8 USB Tablet - Graphite (CTE630GR)

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

 

 

My experience is that this range (Graphire) is for hobbyists. As a professional illustrator and designer, I am currently looking around for better quality.

My old Calcomp Drawingslate had driver problems when I upgraded to a new PC with Win XP so I bought a Wacom Graphire 6X8 USB. I have used it for 3 months. The pen has given up the ghost already - after about 300 hours of use (I don't use the pen with all applications). Replacement pens are around $30 - which adds up to around $120 a year for pens. The problem is not that the nib wore out - the mechanism behind the nib gets jammed. I can see that I need a better quality device.

The pen life problem aside, I have experienced no problems with installation and use on Win XP without SP2. But I have read a few accounts of problems with this combination, so do your homework if you have XP and you installed the service pack.

The pen's handling feels good - very natural, although the reported 512 levels of pressure sensitivity yields no more variation than the 200 something levels of other tablets in this price range. In apps with great brush variations like Photoshop, Painter and Alias Sketchbook Pro you may be disappointed. It will be fine for vector drawing in CorelDraw and Freehand and with simple photo fixers like Photoshop Elements.

Hobbyists - by all means buy this product. Serious designers/artists will have to spend more money.

I'm a college student majoring in art and draw all day long. I didn't have a lot of money to spend but after hearing all the hype about wacom this sounded like a good one to start with, and was I right! I've only had my graphire 3 for a few days but am already using it like a pro! It's so smooth and sensitive, it's way more responsive than a pencil or brush. I can actually draw better with this! I would HIGHLY recommend this tool to anyone. It's fun and oh so easy!

I'm a 16 year old female high school student and i just loved this tablet. After just an hour of expermenting with the pen i found it very easy to navigate and draw..heck my 7 year old sister has no problem using it. It comes with a pen and a wireless mouse plus three excellent programs - adobe phtoshop elements 2 - corel painter essentials 2 - nik color elex pro. The feel is nice...and just pressing lightly gives you a small light line while pressing down as far as you go gives a nice dark, thick, line. It's just great overall, you won't be wasting your money ^^

I have been using my tablet for six months and I could not be happier with it. I had no issues installing it on Windows XP/SP1 and the pen has not worn out with daily use. I do not use the cordless mouse. I purchased the tablet because my wrist hurt when I used a mouse for more that two minutes at a time-- now I can use my computer for hours without any pain!

At 33 years old, I of course learned to draw with paper and pencil. I tried to use a drawing tablet about ten years ago, and found the technology at that time did not accurately simulate drawing on paper, and I could not get used to it. More and more artists started using tablets, so I thought I should give it a try again. I was very pleasantly surprised to find how far technology has come in this time. I found this tablet easy to use from the moment I plugged it in. Also, the pen itself does not require batteries, which older tablets used to.

I am very pleased with my purchase.

I fully agree with the comments about the graphires not being for serious artists due to the limits of prescision and brush effects, sensisitivity and brush angle. That said there are are another set of people these less expensive tablets may work well for... Video editors and other people who may may find that a standard mouse or trackball cause aches and pains. I have found that the more natural style of pen motion to be great relief and solution to wrist strain and, while the precision is not enough for the artist, editors may find the graphires accurate for tasks such as drawing mattes and compositing work needed as part of editing. I have to agree that the pens do not last and are likely hard to replace now (and relatively expensive). That said, if like myself, you use them for video work to avoid wrist strain and already have one or two existing tablets of this type plus spare pens, they have a specific utility, seperate from the needs of graphics artists and other users. I think that the Graphire 3 may be the last model with drivers available for Mac OS 9, and this can still be handy as quite a few OS 9 based Avid's remain in use. They do have also have drivers to update for use on newest computers for download for these tablets. So they remain useful for a sunset of users. Personally I found, unfortunately, they do not work well with Linux computers. I access the value as half that of more modern tablets (assuming comparing new with new).

Very easy to use it. It comes with Corel Painter essentials, but I prefer Photoshop. It has excellent pressure detection. I have been using it every day at work (most than a year) and it still works like new. The very cool feature is that you don't need batteries for the pen and mouse.

I have had this Tablet for the past four days and 'am unable to use the Software that came along with it. I tried to install the driver from the driver cd and it wouldn't load in my laptop ( toshiba protege A 200). I downloaded the driver from the Wacom website and that helped but the remaining two CDs with Photoshop Elements 2 , Corel Painter essentials 2, Photo Express 4 se and Photo Explorer 8 se basic fail to load. When I load it into my dvd drive it just fails to auto load and it does not show up in in the explore window.

The hardware is good, the drivers are awful. There is a serious bug which renders the tablet useless for a second user in XP SP2. Unless the first user logs out totally, the whole tablet is dead for the second user.

This is not the first major driver bug Wacom has allowed to hit its users. (Also worth noting is that when I complained about this to Wacom, they told me to "calm down.") So if you like to be told that your inconvenience is no big deal, go ahead and spend your money.

So I dropped the stylus from my smaller Wacom Usb pad in my foot bath. It ceased working. That's the breaks. Instead of getting just the new pen I decided to get the bigger pad, pen included. So after a three week wait by the supplier, it came. As a graphics pad it works. I looked at the pretty pictures on the box. O ho Thought I, a way to play around with an Ink like software without buying a TabletPc. Well The software doesn't install. It says uninstall previous software. I did, again and again. So I googled around to find a fix which (...) convinced me it wasn't just because I was a bad girl. So I have the big pad. And oops I didnt try it with my Photoshop before writing this. My previous stylus had its bad hair days with the pressure sensitive effect. Didjaknow that Al Hirschfeld used the big pad to do his great cartoons? So my review is like the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forhead, when it s good it is very very good, and when it is bad it is horrid.