slaingod

I’m recently new to the whole graphics tablet market, now that I’m doing more and more development with Flash.  After trying to find a decent yet recent Wacom Intuos 3 on eBay for a few weeks, I finally took another look at Newegg.com (my fav!) and found the Genius F610 Graphics Tablet.  It has a lot of the features that you would expect, and it comes in a great widescreen layout.  The size is HUGE: 6x10 inches, especially for $90 delivered (normally $105, there was a $15 off sale when I got mine). Perhaps if you are strictly a professional designer, the Wacom tablets have that little extra polish that the Genius doesn’t have, but for my purposes, and I would assume 90% of users if truth be told, the Genius F610 is more than adequate for all of your needs. If anything, this is what you should buy your kid for Christmas/Birthday if they have even a hint of artistic talent, and at the price it won’t break the bank.

I do have one problem with it: the drivers for x64 Vista don’t work with it, and according to support won’t in the near future.  This means that two features won’t work on Vista x64 in Photoshop/Flash: Pressure Sensitivity and the Macro Manager buttons. Even without these features it is a great product, but it would be better with them. Why companies are having such problems releasing 64 bit fdrivers is a testament to something, and probably not a good something, about the state of driver development on Windows. I’m not sure if the drivers work for XP x64 or not.

Features:

• 6” x 10” working area operates with widescreen laptops and monitors perfectly
• Very slim design, which should make it easier to use on a desk surface
• 1024-level pressure sensitivity shape and thickness control
• 2000 lines per inch drawing resolution (I think wacom may have >3000lpi but can’t really imagine how that would affect things)
• Has a plastic cover/overlay that should allow you to easily do tracings without damaging the original
• Works for both Mac OSX and Windows
• Let’s you use all of the Windows Tablet PC/Ink functionality, like Windows Journal (which supports pressure sensitivity without the drivers even on x64), and the Tablet PC Input Panel where you can simply write words out and insert them into your document with a very high recognition rate (better than my trained Windows Mobile PDA).
  

Common Complaints:

• Pen uses 1 AAA battery.  I don’t really see how it affects people’s drawing, but I have seen vehement complaints about the thought of needing a battery in the pen. It is still a very slim design.
• No eraser tip on the other end. This may be the best complaint about this device, that you can’t simply flip the pen and erase like you can with the Wacom.  But is that really worth another $250 dollars? A comparable Wacom tablet costs ~$350.
• x64 drivers missing, but the pen still works, just without pressure sensitivty and macros

Basically this is a great little input device for the price, and if you are on the fence about getting one for yourself or the kids, this should be the one to get for yourself or your budding artist if price is a serious issue.