I’ve never used a drawing tablet, ever. I’ve always thought that I might like one but it seemed like an unnessecary expense when my mouse-wielding skills are if not prodigious, then at least acceptable. Last month, I was gifted some Amazon vouchers and instead of buying lots of books (my usual vice) I spotted the Aiptek 600U Slim Tablet Premium II, read the reviews and ordered the thing before I could talk myself out of it.

First Impressions

Upon opening the box and taking out the tablet, my first reaction was “Great Googa-Mooga!, that’s a slim tablet”. The main work surface is only 5mm thick and a narrow bar at the top that’s no more than 9mm thick, this has a very low desk profile. The pen is quite light but feels comfortable in the hand although the buttons seem a little awkward – that may be my inexperience with such things showing through.

Setting Up

I’m using Windows XP Pro so I installed the software included in the package, it wasn’t too clear whether the macro-key manager also installed the drivers but it’s an inobtrusive piece of software which runs in the system tray and allows you to assign actions to any of the x unused macro-keys positioned to either side of the tablet. I then fired up Photoshop and, as if by magic, the tablet worked perfectly.

Working with it

I’m really enjoying working with this, one thing that I love is the ability to sketch, not something that’s easily achieved using a mouse. The 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity really let you start ghosting lines in before committing to stronger strokes.

The nib of the pen is slightly sprung which feels good if, like me, you are happy to doodle with a ball-point pen, the package includes a couple of spare nibs too (which I’ll probably have lost by the time I need them – a little storage compartment in the tablet would have been useful). There is also a neat little pen-stand included in the package, not sure if I’d rather have something that would keep the pen with the tablet when not in use but that’s a matter of opinion.

The workable area of the tablet is approximately A4 size (210mm × 297mm) with about 20mm along the top, left and right edges reserved for the macro keys. This area doesn’t feel restrictive and is impressive considering the low cost of the device.

I can’t find fault with the responsiveness of the tablet, in the example above (completed in about 10 minutes) you can see that I’ve scribbled extensively and never found myself waiting for the action on screen to catch up with my pen movements on the pad.

The tablet detects the pen from about 10mm away so it’s not too fiddly a job to move the pointer into a position without touching the surface.

Problems

I currently only have one criticism, the majority of the macro-key assignments are fixed, I don’t have a problem with the basic functions such as copy, paste, undo etc. but I don’t need Outlook or Powerpoint on there as I rarely (or never in the case of Outlook) use them.

In Conclusion

If like me, you’ve never used a tablet before, I can’t fault it. If you are an experienced tablet user, you might want to try one out first but at the price, it’s a surprisingly good quality product.

Update

This review is nearly two years old now and this tablet is tricky to get hold of so you may be interested in Aiptek’s more up-to-date offering – Aiptek MediaTablet 14000U it looks rather lovely and includes the following features:

• Dual mode active area for PC and Notebook with either Widescreen (16:10) or Standard screen (4:3) monitor
• High resolution 4000 lpi tablet and 1024 levels pen pressure to provide best graphics performance for professional design
• Two rolling pads and 5 hotkeys for supporting both right- and left-hand users to quick zoom in/ out, scroll up/ down/ left/ right, adjust audio volume, and switch between widescreen and standard mode.
• Bundled Photoshop Element 6.0