05
Wacom Cintiq 20WSX Unboxing
With an extra $2k in my pocket, I decided I would purchase a new Wacom Cintiq 20WSX tablet monitor. Having a background in traditional art, I felt it would be a good investment and help me better integrate my fine art skills with my online work. I had also hoped it would reignite my interest in the creation of traditional media.
After researching several online stores for not only the best price, but good a customer rating, I decided to buy the tablet monitor from Cool Graphic Stuff. They had excellent reviews, shipping was free, I didn’t have to pay tax, and they also threw in a couple of free gifts with my Cintiq (a free 2GB flash drive and a free Wacom 6D Art Pen).
Since they were out of stock on the 20WSX, I asked to be notified when they had more in. As soon as another tablet came in, I was sent a personalized notification directly from one of their staff. I brought up their site and made my purchase almost immediately. The checkout process was quick and painless and as soon as I was done, they were out of stock again.
Customer service from Cool Graphic Stuff was impressive. They responded to my questions within minutes and each time it was a personal message and not some cheesy automated response. I would highly recommend doing business with this company if you plan on buying any Wacom graphics tablets or tablet monitors.
My product was shipped soon after ordering via FedEx. I kept close track of the shipping progress, which unfortunately, FedEx dropped the ball on. My estimated shipping date was changed (to a later date) several times without explanation and scheduled tracking updates were never made. Usually FedEx has awesome service, especially compared to UPS (don’t get me started about UPS).
When the package finally arrived, the unboxing began.
As you can see in my photos, the tablet monitor was well packaged.
Thoughts
The monitor is a beast. I originally thought I would be able to lug it back and forth from home and work every so often, but its size made me change my mind.
Build quality of the Cintiq is wonderful. It has a nice and sturdy casing and the stand is solid. Changing tilt angle is quick and painless. Rotating the monitor is smooth as well.
Picture quality is nice, but a little washed out and I think they could have crammed a higher resolution onto this monitor (perhaps 1920 x 1200). It’s only at 1680 x 1050, but that’s ample room for all my palettes in Photoshop. Not having the monitor too bright is probably a good thing since it’s only a few inches from your face the majority of the time.
The pen is comfortable and it also comes with a few extra nibs to emulate traditional media a little bit more. Pressure sensitivity is nice although I wish you could adjust the pressure curve. You can only adjust sensitivity.
Issues
A major issue I have with the Cintiq is lag. It’s definitely noticeable when sketching, but if you are trying to be slow and steady, you won’t notice so much. I would think that for a $2k tablet monitor, this issue would be non-existent.
Another problem with the Cintiq is the thickness of the glass. Your pen floats a good 1/8 of an inch off the actual image surface which creates a discrepancy between the pen tip and the cursor. Wacom seriously needs to develop some form of refractive or super strong, thin glass that rids their tablets of this issue.
I also noticed that the top edge of the tablet gets very hot (but bearable) after a few minutes of use. This makes your hand sweat.
Finally, I wish Wacom had created a stand that can raise to a 90 degree angle. The 60 degree max is not sufficient when using the tablet as a regular monitor (which I guess it wasn’t intended for). Making a vertical stand seems easy enough, so maybe they’ll introduce on down the line.
Final Thoughts
All-in-all, I think the Cintiq is a very useful tool. It’s great for artists with a traditional background that want to explore digital painting. At $2k it’s a little pricey and I honestly wouldn’t say it’s worth that price unless you for sure know you’ll be getting good use out of it.