Wacom experiencing Hard Times...

The thing is competition has been catching up lately. 2 or 3 years back my biggest concern was that no competitor had any offering with wide viewing angle, full HD display which Wacom had been offering for years, and their driver is often abyssmal and lack Wintab compatibility. Now a day many competitor offer full HD IPS with color gamut on par with Cintiq 22HD for one-third of its already reduced price. UC Logic at least has proved themselves to be good with driver support, and as many art program had started adopting MS Ink, the lack of Wintab is no longer a big issue as it used to be.

Like I'm really tempted by the Cintiq Pro 13, but going from 12 to 13 is incremental at best no matter how much better pen performance is. The Yiynova 20 on a other hand offer so much more space with good viewing angle, full HD display for less than half price of the pro 13. When consider that the Yiynova 20 really win out.

There is still specific program that require wacom however, like some user complain about illustration and some 3d program can't work with alternative, so it's best to do research first. For non vector 2D art though, alternative is so good already.

 

I have been to a Wacom booth some where store in Tokyo. It is a little bigger spacious compare with other laptop brand. Full of big screen devices. They don't care much about retail customers. I and some Western students or curiosities play by ourselves. It give me an impression that Wacom is big corp. I don't think they face hard time. I have several post freshmen years working with Japanese corp, to be exact , it was Fujitsu. The Japanese tech corp generally is still give me big surprise. My ex-boss of cause always place pressure on the sale volumes. But time after time, I realize that he is internally confident that the corp's position is unbeatable. The ones to leave are us, not them...

 

Not all people who use real pen and paper are artists. It should not be hard to comprehend not all people using Digital pens are graphic artists, most of them will be note-takers. Wacom and Apple Pencil take the risk of ignoring this fact. To make Wacom a history, All Microsoft has to do is improve NTrig to Apple pencil standards of 240 Hz Sampling rate and zero grams of Initial activation force. I could not care less about the tilt & pressure level sensitivity, My regular Ballpoint pen also does not give tilt sensitivity and also has no great line thickness.

 

I was discussing art monitor though, and digital art is their biggest and most well known segment. Not only on screen tech but also their graphic tablet is on the decline due to chinese competitor.

Wacom parts business on the other hand still have the biggest slice in the industry from what I can see. Since Wacom announced their Wacom AES tech, countless new tablet have come out with Wacom AES tech instead of EMR but it's still Wacom. Their only real competitor in parts for tablet is Ntrig, but since MS bought Ntrig, the number of new Ntrig equipped tablet I can only count on one hand, and most of them are older model and not MS improved one. And even if MS license out Ntrig, most of it would be in the mid and high end segment while Wacom AES had been used in device cheaper than 400$. Most reviewer still find Wacom AES better than Ntrig so Wacom AES still have a much higher reach and still promising to be better so I don't see wacom AES getting beaten by Ntrig anytime soon.

Wacom also have a solid base in the business pen display, like those display used in lab or medical facilities. As far as I can see most new competitor go after art display instead of business one, and business often trust old blood more for their durability.

 

Hey, could you give the link to 400$ Wacom AES device?

 

Before human discover fire, there was no light at the end of the tunnel

 

HP Envy note 8 and ASUS Transformer Mini both use Wacom AES. They are only Atom though and the EMR Mix plus is still much better value buying from Vietnam.

 

http://m.ebay.com/itm/252805308488?...0006400|5374:Tech|5079:5000006407&_mwBanner=1

I understand that model doesn't support wintab but you will have to check the devices thread. Otherwise, that looks like a really good deal. Almost tempted to get one myself even though I don't need it.

 

Dang, that price looks so good...12 inch 16/10 is a plus too, and looks like keyboard is included. Now if only I didn't have a perfectly good 12 incher and a gallore of old wacom penabled stuff in my room, and not saving for a Yiynova 20... This is starting to turn into an addiction.

Even if you will need to pull an extra 50$ for the pen, it's still an amazing deal. I really want to try out how a legit Wacom AES feel like after the disaster with the Chinese Goodix AES.

 

Two things:

1. If by 16/10 you were talking about aspect ratio, it is actually 3:2. The actual resolution is 1920x1280.

2. I'm not 100% certain that it is a legit wacom AES. I think I read it is using an Elan panel that is wacom AES spec, kinda like the Lenovo Miix 700. That is why I said it may not support wintab, and that you should check the device thread. For what it's worth, I have miix 700 and it's mostly fine. I don't need wintab because I'm not an artist and only use OneNote. But the hover distance isn't great and there is some jitter and some offset, both in the middle of the screen. But that is a different device so I can't speak to all the details on the HP.