By Brady Betzel

I love Wacom products. I felt I needed to address my bias so you know what you are in for in this review of the Wacom One, which is essentially a screen that you can draw on — a really light version of a Cintiq. But don’t worry, it’s not all doves and butterflies. I still have some critiques.

I’ve reviewed Wacom products before, including the Wacom Intuos tablets and mobile Cintiqs. All have some amazing capabilities matched with the incredible texture and feel of drawing on a natural surface. I use Wacom tablets primarily for my work as an online editor, and they are very helpful when using apps like Adobe’s After Effects and Photoshop. An added bonus is that, ergonomically speaking, they have relieved me of a lot of the pain I was having when only using a mouse while editing and color correcting. The use of a pen seems to agree with me and my wrists.

If you’ve ever used a Wacom tablet like the Intuos and dreamed of upgrading to a large Cintiq Pro, you’d better get that $3,300 ready if you want the 32-inch beauty. This is where the Wacom One comes into play; it’s the lowest-priced of all the Wacom screen-based tablets at $399.95.

You are probably wondering, why so inexpensive? I’ll get into that, but first some technical specs. The Wacom One is a 13.3-inch screen that connects to your computer via USB and HDMI plugs. You also need to have it plugged into a wall outlet. It is light, weighing in at just 2.2 pounds. It covers 72% of the NTSC color spectrum, has a viewing angle of 170 degrees, a 1000:1 contrast ratio, 26ms response time, 16:9 aspect ratio and three color-temperature settings (we will get into this later). It offers a 60-degree supported pen tilt and foldable legs with 19-degree angle, and it comes with a Wacom One X-Shape cable, a Wacom One battery-free pen and three extra pen nibs. It also has a one-year limited warranty in the US, Canada and Latin America.

Out of the Box
In just under 10 minutes I had unboxed the Wacom One pen and tablet, plugged it into the power outlet and computer using the supplied X-Shape cable over USB and HDMI, downloaded the driver/software, restarted the computer, and was up and running inside of Photoshop pretending I can draw and paint.

The paper-like surface of the Wacom One is my favorite feature of Wacom tablets. It always just feels right to me … very natural, yet durable. The One is light but sturdy enough to feel like you aren’t going to break it. I love that there are two feet that fold out so you can stand the tablet up. And they aren’t cheap or some weird piece of plastic that detaches. Under the left foot are three replacement nibs (pen tips) and even a built-in nib extractor.

Test Drive
To test out the Wacom One, I jumped into my usual post apps, like Avid Media Composer; Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve; Adobe’s Premiere, After Effects and Photoshop; and more — including third-party plugins like Boris FX’s Mocha Pro. I tested the Wacom One via a Windows 10 Pro-based PC, and all applications worked great.

The Wacom One has 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity. This is half of the 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity you enjoy on the Cintiq Pro line of tablets, but to be honest, most people aren’t going to miss those. The pen supplied with the Wacom One is light and comfortable, it can even be stored in the ribbon on the top of the tablet. I don’t miss the pen holder that came with the Intuos tablets at all. I would rather the ribbon was the standard for all future Wacom tablets.

Overall, there were no technical complaints when working inside of the apps on my Windows PC; everything worked the way it should. Be warned that if you use a high-resolution, widescreen monitor you will have some issues. I was using a Dell monitor — measuring 5120×1440 resolution — with the Wacom One, and I was having a hard time using both devices at once. For instance, in Resolve I had to bring my widescreen monitor down to 1920×1080 to be able to use the Wacom One appropriately.

I wanted to draw Power Windows using the pen, and the only comfortable way to do that was if my monitors were mirroring the same desktop and were 1920×1080. This kind of goes for all sorts of apps, like Premiere and After Effects. One weird use of the Wacom One in Resolve was that I could drag just the scopes over and use them, but I wouldn’t suggest spending your money on the Wacom One just for that.

When I used the Wacom One with my laptop, which has a much more normal screen size, I was able to use both at 1920×1080 and everything felt the way it should. In fact, I wasn’t sure if Resolve would handle the Wacom One correctly, and to my surprise, it worked beautifully. Drawing mattes was easy.

Suggestions
What did I miss, and what sort of improvements could Wacom add to the next iteration of the Wacom One? First off, I miss the eraser on top of the pen. I’m sure there is a reason to “dumb down” the pen, but I would really love to have the two click points and the eraser-ability.

You are probably thinking, “Hey, just use your other Wacom pens on it then, dummy!” Unfortunately, my Wacom Pro pen isn’t compatible, which is ridiculous in my opinion (but also makes sense if you want to sell those people on the higher-end Cintiq Pro).

One thing I remember from the Wacom MobileStudio was the carrying bag that came with it. I think it was a heather grey, messenger-style, zippered bag, and I really liked it. I wish the Wacom One came with a protective sleeve or carrying case. I don’t like to leave my Wacom tablets out if I don’t have to, so a simple sleeve or cover would be a nice addition.

Summing Up
In the end, the Wacom One is the creative pen display/tablet people need if they can’t quite stomach the Cintiq Pro price tag because the Wacom One is very reasonably priced. There are a few shortcomings though — incompatibility with the Wacom Pro pen, a non-laminated screen (the digitizer is closer to the screen you draw on, like the Cintiq), older interface style with no USB-C option, no UHD resolution, and only three options for color temperature. I noticed that you can only switch between 5000K, 6500K, and 9300K in color temperatures. This seems to be a carryover from the Cintiq line, but it would be really helpful to have a wider variety of color temperatures available and easily applied.

But, overall, for $399.95, the Wacom One is a great price for a whole lot of accurate drawing functionality. One thing I didn’t mention is that you can use the Wacom One on an Android phone (with the proper adapters).

Any shortcomings mentioned about the Wacom One are fixed in the Cintiq Pro line, which makes sense, it just costs more. As an editor or VFX designer, if you are curious about a Wacom tablet, the non-screen tablets like the Intuos are great, but the Wacom One is a really interesting piece of equipment that allowed me to work faster in lots of editing-related apps.

Brady Betzel is an Emmy-nominated online editor at Margarita Mix in Hollywood, working on shows like Life Below Zero and The Shop. He is also a member of the Producers Guild of America. You can email Brady at bradybetzel@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @allbetzroff.