About three-four Christmases ago, round about the time I stopped keeping track of the years, a cute A5 Wacom Bamboo Fun sat anxiously under the tree for me, rattling in it’s box and peering excitably through the breathing holes they’d punched in the present for it, just aching to be held by a loving family!
" Luff meh plz? :3 I's a good guy! Yous can tell cos of whites and bluh! ^^' "
… nowadays it’s shaky, battered, been taken apart and rebuilt several times too many and I’m just looking for an excuse to take it out behind the cowshed and introduce it to the business end of an axe–
Now don’t go getting me wrong! I LOVED that old thing like a best friend, it served me well during my learning years of digital art and it lasted me a good while, but I wasn’t half grateful when my prayers were heard and I got my new baby! ^^
BUUUT back in the day I didn’t quite know what I was looking at and good, non-biased information was as rare as rocking horse shit. I’m not going to claim to be technical knowing, these are the only two I’ve ever used so I’ve no experience to speak of and I only ever use it with photoshop (though I can’t honestly imagine it acting a great deal different on any other program! I don’t think it has preferences! 
) for digital painting use so strictly speaking that’s the only experience I can relate… but…
What the sellers say:
Wacom Bamboo Fun Medium Graphics Tablet
Product Features
- A5 pen tablet
- Cordless battery-free pen with 2 customisable rocker switch buttons
- 360 degree Touch Ring for instant zoom and scroll
- 4 customisable ExpressKeys for access to quick functions
- 512 pressure levels to support pressure sensitive tools in painting/photo applications
- Advanced pressure sensitive resolution (2540 dpi) High report rate (133pps) for precise output
- Pressure sensitive eraser
- Detachable USB cable for easy portability
- Support of Mac and PC
- Premium Microsoft certification “Certified for Vista”
Genius G-PEN M712X Tablet
Product Specifications
| General |
| Brand: |
Genius |
| Item Height : |
15 millimetres |
| Item Width: |
42 centimetres |
| Screen Size: |
14 inches |
|
| Hard Drive Interface: |
USB 2.0 |
Technical Details
- The Genius G-PEN M712X graphics tablet boasts a workingarea of 30.5 x 18.4 cm (wide) or 24.1 x 18.4 cm (standard), and is suppliedwith a single cordless pen with 1,024 different pressure levels for all sortsof shapes and thickness control.
- The two scroll wheels make the G-PEN M712X suitable forboth left- and right-handed users, while the 34 shortcut keys give you instantaccess to functions in the software provided.
- Genius lets you put creativity to work with the G-PEN M712X!
- 12-month UK manufacturer’s warranty included.
Doesn’t bamboo sell itself well! ^^
WHAT I’VE NOTICED:
Size matters. The most noticeable difference isn’t so much to do with product brand, but with how a different size of tablet effects drawing with it! I suspect very much pen sensitivity comes into this as well, which the Genius holds the title for easily… I’ve found that since switching, when creating high detailed pieces, where I used to religiously zoom into an image close enough to count the pixels, I can now happily backpedal and work merrily away.
Above: The level I used to zoom to if I wanted to create detail in the eye. Below: Where I can work from to create a similar level of detail with a larger tablet and a more sensitive pen.
This is greatly beneficial for when drawing the ‘bigger picture’ as it were. Whilst you’ll still want to zoom in for those small particular details (say for example if you are adding graffiti to a distant wall or drawing frills on a dress, things that don’t necessarily need to weigh against the rest of the image or match it’s flow) it becomes FAR, FAR easier to really balance one portion of the picture with the next. You can plan for gravity, weight in anatomy much more efficiently and drawing rough design work becomes a much smoother transition! The same applies to colour.
DAY 1, “OH COOL! IT’S GOT GADGETS!”, DAY 2, “OH K6 GO AWAY ALREADY!”
At first the many boxes on the edge of the Genius look kinda like something from an old exam paper, the bits the teacher is meant to write on… and, looky here, it has two wheels! Not one, but a whole two scroll-y wheels! Read ‘em and weep, Mouse, I can scroll up and down AND left and right! ‘Ave it!
I don’t know if this is because I’ve developed a habit, but I’ve found I’ve barely touched all the new toys, when deeply engaged in a piece of work I sit in a certain position, I can maintain this for hours if left undisturbed and I doubt I’m alone in this. Leaning forwards and shifting my resting hand to scroll zoom in and out tends to (at risk of sounding painfully ‘hippy’ or pretentious) throw my whole artistic/body flow or break my concentration, so the wheels are quickly becoming little more than decoration.
And as for that sodding ‘assign button’ procedure– well first of all I will shake the hand of anyone that can figure out about 30 different functions they’ll use on a common basis and secondly it generally serves to irritate! Setting one as the ‘undo’ button worked wonderfully until I started wandering over to it by accident and erasing things unexpectedly. Sometimes I don’t even notice until I realise ‘oh… where’s her fingernail gone!?’ … it’s a risky function so in the end I scrapped it.
It’s probably due to my not having adapted yet and I’d imagine they’d come in handy in, say, 3D work, but if you ask me simplicity is the best policy. 30 odd function buttons smells a lot like CV filler to me!
INSTALLING from Wacom bamboo to the Genius tablet gave me enough trouble I had to leave it to Marmaduke’s capable hands! After changing over I found that the new tablet was unresponsive when plugged in. Great, I think, installation troubles. Several reinstall’s later (two) I come up blank. Marmaduke later finds that Wacom (being the jealous, bunny boiler it is) or Genius (being the overly self conscious, clingy, sensitive lover it is) wont work IF THE OLD DRIVERS ARE INSTALLED. One sabotages the other. We had to uninstall bamboo and then reinstall Genius.
Speaking of– their website takes great pleasure in confusing you with unhelpfully labelled drivers. If you’re of a nervous disposition you’re very likely to take one look at it and leave well enough alone for fear of destroying your whole system. My advice here is to not be frightened, just download the file there that matches your system. Ignore everything else.
CONCLUSION
This is an unfair trial, so let’s up the odds; let’s assume I have a shiner, newer A4 Wacom tablet sat side by side with my Genius instead. I’d have to say that Wacom is probably the victor, that is UNTIL we inspect the price tag…
… I’ve no doubt you could find a cheaper Wacom example somewhere, but on the whole they do tend to lighten your wallet! True Genius has it’s fussy side and it’s website is a little confusing, but unless it made you walk all the way to the manufacturers up in Japan for a driver, I don’t honestly think it’s a £100 difference worth of fussy!
