Wacom released its Intuos 3 graphic tablet a few weeks ago. The Intuos 3 is Wacom’s most elegant tablet up to date. It’s also their best. The tablet has touch strips, tablet keys and the well-know active surface. There is little to dislike about the Intuos 3.

In the past, I always purchased the largest tablet I could lay my hands on. This did not result in me being a better artist. Far from it: in my experience, the bigger the tablet, the more cramps you will suffer in your hand from trying to hold on to it. An A4-tablet is about the right size. With an Intuos 2 A4-oversized tablet still on my shelf, I decided to buy the Intuos 3 A5-tablet with the 6x8 inch surface.

It has been a good buy, but I was very surprised when I received the box with the tablet from the Apple Store (Wacom doesn’t offer test units to individual journalists anymore, so it was buy or bust). This box seemed to be awfully small to my liking. When I unpacked the Intuos 3 it immediately became clear why the box had been so small: this must be the most elegant and slim tablet Wacom has ever made.

The Intuos 3 A5 and A4 tablets come with two touch strips (one at each side) and two series of tablet keys. Each set of touch strips and tablet keys can be set up differently, giving you an effective eight keys to set and two touch strips that can do different things. The tablet’s bevel (don’t know what to call it otherwise) is now of shiny plastic. The colour is dark grey with a metallic finish. The USB cable sits at the top left and you can guide it sideways or through a hole at the top of the tablet.

The activities LED is now blue when the tablet is resting, and green when you are using it. The tablet keys are set identical at both sides by default, as are the touch strips. The default for the latter is to use them as scrolling touch strips. The tablet keys are set by default to mimmic the Space key, Command key, Option and Shift key (on Mac OS X).

The setup at both sides and at the top of the active area is very efficient, in some respects even too efficient. If you’re like me and you often use the tablet with the keyboard above it, you’re bound to brush against the touch strips and activate them by accident. When I started using the tablet, I found myself wondering quite often if the Mac was broken when a window suddenly started scrolling. After a week, I got used to the touch strips being there and being responsible for the accidental scrolling.

The problem can of course be easily solved, either by setting the touch strips to only react when you’re using the pen to touch them, set them to a different action, or just being more careful when you reach for the keyboard…

The tablet keys are less easy to hit by accident. They were meant to make using modifiers inside Photoshop and other graphics applications easier, and they succeed at that very well because you don’t have to use the keyboard so often as you used to. Especially the ability to set up each set of keys differently is a great asset… if you can remember the settings of course.

The tablet comes with a 5-button mouse and a pen with pen stand. The mouse is a big step forward to the older Wacom mice I’ve been using with previous versions of the Intuos tablet. It is smaller, more ergonomically curved and the two main buttons and scroll wheel/button work very well. However, I do have some criticism as to the side buttons: they are simply too easy to press. More resistance before a click occurs, would make these buttons workable too. As they are now, they’re useless unless you really have no force in your hands at all.

The pen has been much touted by Wacom because of its better shape. Well, I personally was and still am quite happy with my aluminium Intuos 2 pen. That one is thick, which is good to hold for long periods without developing cramps. The Intuos 3 pen is somewhat longer, has a less rounded shape and a longer rubber grip. The switch is better than the Intuos 2’s. The longer rubber grip is somewhat better because it gives more “sense” to the pen’s position, but for the rest there is no difference. I didn’t particularly like the aluminium alike plastic it’s been made off. Not that the plastic is of bad quality, but it looks cheap, which my Intuos 2 aluminium doesn’t at all! Granted: I had to pay extra for it.

The pen stand is an entirely different story: this is what Wacom’s pen stands should have been all along. You can set the pen upright, or lay it down in a balanced way.

The pen now comes with extra nibs. Not the replacement kind, but extra nibs like a felt tip nib and a nib with a built-in tiny spring. The latter gives a feel like that of a good quality ball point pen. The felt tip, however, really feels like a felt pen. The only thing that is worrying, is that it will wear very quickly, though. But Wacom already takes pre-orders for replacement nibs of all kinds. The felt tip is definitely very close to a real-world drawing experience.

Combined with Painter IX, you can’t go wrong with the pen and its customization options.

The tablet’s active surface was a semi-transparant plastic cover. The transparency allowed for sketches to be placed underneath the cover and be traced. Unfortunately, this is no longer possible. The cover is opaque and you can’t see anything lying underneath. You can still lift it, though, so perhaps Wacom will deliver replacements for that too. However, for a tablet like this I would expect the surface to allow me full control over what I want to do. Perhaps Wacom didn’t deem it necessary anymore, with the pen becoming activated on a distance of 6 mm above the surface.

Drawing with the new Intuos 3 is a better experience than with previous versions, no matter how odd this may sound. The tablet itself is more rigid, so you can take it on your lap and not fear about it bending even a little. It’s far more slim, so it’s easier to draw on it. The surface itself is less smooth, with more of a feeling like paper. This gives a better drawing experience, because your pen has less of a tendency to slip and “drift” as you draw.