Going to try out a Cintiq 13HD when Amazon gets them in stock... but if it's a disappointment like the 22HD was, I'll have to check out those Samsungs.

Samsung is the shit

Hmm interesting.. I've been looking for new tablet pcs capable of running sai. The one I have might be on its way out soon. But from just taking a quick look at the specs of the 500t it's defiantly better than what I got. Nice and affordable too! Hah well if I end up getting a new tablet I might go after one of these

Is there anything about the 700T that bothers you? I'm looking to pick one up next month (hopefully they'll still be available then, since Samsung is going to be announcing their new line tomorrow).

Oh, I thought of one more question. Do you use the S-Pen, and if not, have you noticed any scratches from using a different pen?

I use the S-pen for normal usage and I use Fujitsu's Lifebook stylus for normal use because A: it has 2 buttons and B: it's more akin to using a pen. Indeed all wacom-penabled pens will work but ONLY wacom penabled pens so you have to research before using an alternative. Because of the form factor I am thinking about getting this one from motion computing.

https://store.motioncomputing.com/T.....lutionCatID=18

I use them daily and no, not a single scratch yet!

Yea, from what I've read, the motion computing pen is the closest to the Intuos-style pens in terms of size and comfort.

Sweet. I definitely plan on getting a better pen than the teeny S-Pen when I get mine. Thank you for taking the time to answer.

(err, I meant to say the Fujitsu to draw)

Congrats boss! Sounds like life is far less stressful with new toys.

I will defiantly have to consider this when I move- me and lundi were thinking of saving up for the 13 hd, but heck, this is the same price and comes with an ENTIRE COMPUTER- might not have as much pressure but goodness, who needs it- my intuos 3 is what im used to and that has the same level from what ive read-

You should do a video review on it sometime or something and show us how you draw on it- it would be interesting to see how good it works for an actual artist (no offense to people on youtube but..everytime I go on the market for a new tablet its impossible to find anyone who uses it for more then note taking or just to replace a mouse)

I've been wanting to make videos once I got comfortable but I let my brother borrow my good camera, the one with the tripod, for his trip to Cali. I recorded several drawings with screen grabbers but it loses it's meaning if you can't see me actually use draw on it without any cables attached to it, showing what it can do with the battery alone.

As for pressure sensitivity I always though it played a small role after a certain point. Even though this particular tablet has 1024 levels of pressure I don't think a 256 would make any appreciable difference unless you're so light handed and sensitive that you can actually feel out and make use of the differences between the fractions of lbs of pressure between the two.

I did get to show some people how it works while I was in Las Vegas though and yeah, a lot of them couldn't believe it! It's a shame how little press windows 8 tablet gets as far as art on the go goes because these tablets are amazing and are only getting better.

Pressure means a lot to me sadly because of how buggered my hand has gotten- I have to draw as lightly as possible now, which I actually do when I draw on paper- using a tablet for so long I had it set to about medium pressure and this apparently was never good for my tendons (think I have the development of tennis elbow) But like I said 1024 is what I use right now so that would do well either way- thanks for posting about it though me and lundi will def be considering this one

Just a quick question, do the screens scratch much (if at all) after plenty of use? And would a screen protector ruin the "feel" of drawing?

IS this the same one you said required a lot of work to get it to function properly?

I hate my T902. :( It has a severe issue where it drops connection with the blue tooth pen and when that happens, my drawing program crashes!! It happens in both SAI and Photoshop.

It also occasionally gets into fits where the pen is incredibly jittery and spastic. I don't know how to fix these issues and the last time I checked Google, no one else experienced them.

I want to throw this laptop out the window and get something new. I regret getting something so expensive when I already have a 24HD but I thought it would be great for portability. Not in its current state though. :(

The T902 is literally the best thing you can get and I have been following mobile technology closely for almost a year now. Although you can upgrade the PC stats the digitizer is always the same and I am quite surprised to hear about these issues.

But then again I'm not.

The fact of the matter is that all wacom based tablets use the third rate wacom penabled (now named wacom feel-it) digitizers which, quite frankly, is crap compared to current generation boards like that of the Intuos or any Cintiq. Are they usable? Yes. It's literally the best experiance you can get unless you spend $3000 for the IMO limited modbook pro. These digitizers are a decade old and are prone to the issues you mention much more often than said Intuos or Cintiqs. From what I hear, due their monopoly on the good hardware and their wanton disregard for advancement of technology wacom prefers to sell $300 monitor/ digitizer combos for $2000-3000 rather than licensing out the hardware they easily could to make mobile cintiq computers instead of the mobile graphires they leave the world stuck in.

Slowly companies are finding loopholes around the severe limitations Wacom puts on them. Samsung was able to provide drivers/ firmware that unlocks 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity on the same boards other TPCs use that are themselves forced to use 256. The boards are literally the same, but a simple firmware tweak was able to make that difference which to me is really telling of how shitty wacom is being about their technology as a whole.

Lenovo is also doing this awesome thing too: http://cnettv.cnet.com/lenovo-monit.....-50138413.html

A $300 wireless or USB monitor/ tablet/ touch screen with wacom penabled technology. Functionally a graphire cintiq at the fraction of the comparable cintiq's price.

I'm hoping that wacom's own tablet pc will use the intuos/ cintiq digitizer but who knows... we should have had it available in tablet pcs years ago and we still don't.

<.<!!! *knows what to get my niece for her birthday nows*

How is the brightness of the screen? I notice with my 12WX Cintiq that the screen is much darker/warmer than my main screen is, which makes for frustration when I move it over to check the colours (I frequently forget to do this when I'm in the process of colouring/shading)
Also could you elaborate on what pen you use? I still very much like my Wacom pen, I believe it's the Intuos series pen and I really like how it feels in my hand.

You've made me very interested in picking one of these bad boys up, and just selling my Cintiq. I really hate having to lug around all those cables and the converter box whenever I want to take it with me.

With "it" I meant the picture that I'm working on :p

It's 400 nits. It's so bright that on it's max setting that it actually puts me to tears if I use it right after waking up at night.

(I have since turned it down!)

Took a quick look at this thing's specs and wow...it got me drooling.

I must ask this,what is the calibration like drawing wise?Do your pen strokes lag?And lastly how much did it set you back?
I ask theses because I am wanting to upgrade to a tablet I can see my art on as well as draw on.

It's hard to say. Being that it uses the wacom penabled digitizer it's going to be inherently inferior to Intuos/ Cintiq but it's still definitely workable, not that there is a superior alternative for Tablet PCs. The most important thing for me was legacy program support (for example SAI) and pressure sensitivity all across the board without any questoin and yeah, it fits the bill.

With that said, there are no noticeable differences for me being that I use Sai and it's so well optimized it runs well on most computers. People have mentioned lag in programs like photoshop using larger brushes but for what I do there is no noticeable downgrade in my ability to draw... depending on what drivers I use (IE I need custom pressure curves and the current wacom driver killed my curve utility forcing me to revert back to Fujitsu's drivers).

Thanks for your sharing your experience! I've been wanting this or the Surface Pro (now that there are Wacom drivers for it) for a while now, and have had trouble choosing between them. Now that the new Haswell chip from Intel has been released, though, I think I'll hold off for a while longer to see if either company announces a new version that uses it. Haswell focuses on battery life instead of performance, and has a much better GPU, so I'm hoping that it might be possible to see a fanless design, or at least a version that lasts longer or is lighter. If that doesn't pan out, new Silvermont Atom chips that supposedly won't suck are on the horizon as well, so that might be a way to get something like this at a much lower price. We'll see!

Although it has nearly identical hardware to the surface pro I was shocked at how bad the drivers were for the digitizer. Well... they aren't bad. They are using something that's clearly superior... it's just that their assumption that developers would have adjusted for the new drivers was in bad taste because upon release yeah.... pressure sensitivity did not work because they only supplied a new set of drivers and not the older one that most programs... like PHOTOSHOP actually use, making it useless out of the box.

I was also shocked that my version of the 700T runs it's ran in a single channel, while the surface pro runs in dual! Well this samsung device does get the advantage of the max performance boost when plugged into the AC adapter but it's at the cost of running so hot they have to include fire warnings - heh. Still... 2.6 ghz at single channel vs 1.7 ghz in dual... hard to say which one was better but hey, I can still play dark souls on my 700T so I'm good to go!

The haswell was an amazing development despite what a lot of people might think in my opinion. No it's not that great of a performance boost.... but for the mobile form factor it delivers the same or better relative speeds, less throttling and heat, and a longer battery life! And yeah it's facilitates a much better gpu setup than the slightly older HD4000 machines. It's not sexy and exciting news for some... but as someone who is falling in love with mobility this was big news for me. It almost made me want to get out and buy a new tablet! Though unfortunately I have been hearing some bad things about the Helix that makes me glad I got my hands on something that does suit my needs.

Something better is always around the corner though... I just hope that whatever comes out next has fully functional drivers, because right now that's been the biggest problem with windows 8 devices.

Yeah, I totally agree. While it's true that PenTab is proprietary to Wacom, and Photoshop should support Microsoft's Windows tablet API so that all digitizer brands work, it was short-sighted of Microsoft to release the tablet knowing that Photoshop support was missing. Turned it from something I was looking forward to to something that I didn't want at all. And yeah, I totally agree about Haswell. While I don't feel like I need to upgrade my Ivy Bridge desktop CPU, I hope Haswell might finally offer enough battery life to make having a laptop or tablet like this compelling for me. And yeah, the Windows 8 pen situation is pretty annoying... I can't remember how many hoops I tried jumping through to disable the "pen feedback" animation on my desktop Win 8 machine, or exactly what it was that got rid of it, but I can't believe Microsoft is pushing so hard on something that everyone who uses tablets hates for the click lag it causes. I was hoping they'd make it easier to disable in Win 8, not harder!

There is always something new on the horizon... it's frustrating to always be waiting for one more thing... but I feel like Haswell might be worth waiting for in this case for me.

How is it, might it be with Manga Studio 4?

I've never touched manga studio before but after reading reviews I am slowly convincing myself to try manga studio 5.

The rulers and guides are incredible for mapping out perspectives and the fill tool seems like it would make my comic work SO much easier to color because of the smarter settings (like bleed and gap filling!).

I'll upgrade to 5 in a bit, bit for me, I am scared of color so it's a low priority. But with Photoshop going to it's monumentally stupid Cloud Subscription model, alternatives to Photoshop are becoming more attractive. On the other hand I love the sketch, and inking tools for Manga Studio just so much (see my past 7 recents). Love to see what you do with those tools. Also with all the rulers and panel cutting you could probably bang out comics in short order.

If you don't mind me asking, how would you compare tablet pc's to the cintiq? I'm saving up for a cintiq, but with the number of artists looking at tablets like Samsung's Series 7 Slate and the one you've mentioned here, has me taking a second look.

If you don't mind being tethered to your computer then by all means get a cintiq. You get the added benefit of using the full range of resources your desktop brings on top of using the superior digitizer.


If you want a mobile sketching/ inking/ coloring machine with a bright screen and a can deal with a 4-6 hour battery life but with specs limited in comparison to a desktop get this (or a custom T902 if you want something more powerful, albeit at twice the weight and thickness). It also uses the wacom penabled digitizer which has less pressure sensitivity and is less accurate in comparison for it's lack of tilt and rotation recognition, meaning that regardless of where the actual pointer is or what angle you are holding the stylus the cursor will be positioned at some arbitrary point in relation to the stylus meaning you either learn how to hold it out at a perfect 90 degree angle away from the tablet or regularly calibrate it for whatever angle you're going to be holding it in (basically the woes of bamboo/ graphire owners).

Wow, that's a very detailed review! Seeing as I do all my colouring/inking at home, looks like I have my answer! And don't get me started on the nightmare that is inking with the bamboo! Thanks man :D!

Aye. It's good for most work... but if you want to line up two razor thin points the frustration of using lower tier digitizers will remain and like I said elsewhere in this journal, it cannot be avoided as this is the best digitizer available to us on a tablet PC with the exception of the one on the modbook pro, which forces you to use a 1200x800 resolution screen for $3000.

3000...might as well buy a whole Mac setup for that money!

Why not wait for Wacom's new touch tablet? Dunno their platform yet though.

I bought this before that was even announced. Hell I bought this before the Surface Pro's specs where even announced!

I actually have a Samsung Slate which is the precursor to this machine (same computer - keyboard). But I find it hard to use because its a touchscreen and it doesn't shut off the touch when the stylus gets close. Does this kind not have that problem?

There's programs that solve this issue. I have an Asus EP121 which was samsungs competitior I guess, and I have a program called touchtoggle.exe
Here's a thread about touch on the samsung series 7 http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/sam.....ultitouch.html

Also, there's this http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/sam.....s-7-slate.html

Art dock enables you isolate touch screen input only to the art dock panel, so you can still benefit from touch with on screen hotkeys without the drawbacks.

There are palm rejection settings but those are always kind of iffy. There are shortcuts/ programs that disable touch out right but it introduces certain bugs and becomes a general inconvenience if you still want to use touch on the fly.

What curbs this is this little program.

http://butimaru.blogspot.com/2012/1.....-windows8.html

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/17137175/TGuard.zip

What it does is intercept specific touch input/ commands instead of disabling the drivers. It nullifies every effect except for the side swipes which means you can still use the Metro UI and start menu with touch while keeping it virtually disabled on desktop mode until you press the Tguard shortcut on the taskbar again. It's one simple click and it made touch getting in the way a non-issue!