For those who do not know what Wacom Cintiq is : Let me clue you in, it is (or you can say was the) world’s one of the best graphics design tablet. Wacom is the Japan based company founded in 1983, and has come come up with great products for graphic designers, and is considered to be the pinnacle of professional drawing tablets. Recently the launch of Apple I-Pad Pro with a Apple Pencil left a debatable market among the Cintiq users and the Apple Fans. The Agenda being “Cintiq is superior in performance and design at a similar price.”
But according to Linda Dong, (who is a designer and has worked on Apple’s Prototyping Team, exploring new user-interaction concepts for future hardware and technology) “Quite plainly, the Cintiq sucks in comparison. And I’ve been using them for years for industrial design sketching, UI, and art.”
She also posted a detailed Comparison of Apple Pencil and Wacom Cintiq. Let’s move ahead on it’s sideline :
Stylus Design
Apple usually has kept their Design in one of the top priorities. Their Industrial Design team is awesome and they craft every detail with intention. Same has been the case with Apple Pencil too.
According to Linda Dong : “The Apple Pencil has a much narrower body and tip, allowing the stylus to not obscure the drawing itself. I would also argue it provides more freedom of drawing motion. The Cintiq stylus is big, the pen tip is wobbly, your fingers randomly collide into the side buttons, and everything feels like cheap jiggly plastic.”
Surface Design
The preferred surface design is usually the light, sleek and good surface material. The Retina display for Apple has been the top notch of surface quality, take Macbook or previous I-Pads, everybody loves the Apple touch.
Quoting Linda Dong’s experience: “Cintiqs are heavy, really heavy. The ones deemed “portable” are hardly at best. Most of them come with a giant set of cords because, obviously, they need to be plugged into a computer. The screens aren’t retina, the color is whack, the brightest it can display is not very bright and there’s a lot of reflection. Most importantly the screen itself has a huge air gap between the pen and the digital screen, causing parallax. No amount calibration shakes the feeling that you’re not actually drawing on this surface. All these things are a non-issue with the iPad Pro, also it runs its own OS and has multi touch build in, you’ll be paying $2000+ for multitouch on a Cintiq.“
As a matter of fact, the Cintiq 13 is 1.2 kg, Cintiq 22 is 8.5 kg, whereas Apple IPAD PRO is just 713 gms light and also 6.9 mm thick as that of Cintiq 13 which is of 14 mm thickness.
Drawing
Even the Microsoft Surface Pro or Pro3 was envisioned over: Lose a minority of creatives, and produce a thinner and cheaper tablet for everyone. It did prove good but not for Graphics designers who chose to stick to Cintiq over Surface Pro or Pro3. Its yet to see whether Microsoft or Wacom focuses in Digitizers in future otherwise the Apple IPAD Pro is a take-in for the Creatives which is offering a better latency (lower is better) with virtually no lag.
“Latency latency latency. As in all that latency I can visibly see as I wait for my stroke to catch up with my Cintiq pen. Oops! Dragged my pen too far because I couldn’t see where the strike would end up? Guess that’s why I mapped 10 of these buttons to Ctrl+Z. This is the game changer with the Apple Pencil, barely any latency so you actually feel like the pencil is leaving ink and can see the outcome of your drawing as it’s happening. Real-life pencils have gotten this figured out for years. It also seems like pressure and tilt are mapped more sensitively compared to the Cintiq. Outcome: drawing more of what you intended on the first try.
The iPad Pro + Apple Pencil: $899 – $1,179
The cheapest, non-touch-enabled Cintiq: $799
All other Cintiq models: $1,000 – $2,800
So my advice to anyone trying to decide between buying Apple Setup vs. Cintiq is run far far away from the Cintiq. Especially if you’re a student. Specialized professionals that have their cintiqs hooked up to PC’s running Solidworks, C4D, CAD, yeahhhhh…..I guess cross your fingers they make iPad apps. ” said Linda Dong.
Note : The WWDC 2015 is expected to be something for iOS 9. So the apps for Solidworks, C4D, CAD might not be a worry.
Conclusion : It’s worth a try anyway
So let hook up to the fact that it is worth giving a try but the $1000 is not a less amount, specially for students in creative fields. So let us wait for the product to arrive in the market, go for more in depth user reviews to make the final conclusion.
Illustration Grid 