The Cintiq 15x, a 15-inch-diagonal LCD screen with 1024 x 768 color resolution that works with a wireless pen, is designed for everyone from designers and illustrators to doctors and professors.

The 16-inch x 13.4-inch tablet is 2 inches thick and retails for US$1,899, a price that Wacom says is half the cost of its predecessor -- the PL-500 -- with advanced features such as brighter LCD, better color, bigger viewing angle and improved pressure sensitivity.

Wacom says the graphics tablet is no longer just a tool for computer assisted design (CAD) and 2D/3D animators, allowing users of all kinds to edit photos and input data via handwriting.

"The rising boom of digital photography is really driving photo-editing solutions in the consumer space," Cintiq marketing manager Michael Marcum told TechExtreme. "Additionally, adoption of the pen-input paradigm is on the rise, as evidenced by Microsoft 's inclusion of handwriting recognition into Office XP."

Pressure Is On

The Cintiq pen, powered by an electromagnetic field in the display, has 512 levels of pressure for both pen tip and erasure through variable sensors, Wacom says.

"A sensor board with a grid of wires lies behind the surface of the LCD, which provides a coordinate system for the pen to provide absolute positioning information," Marcum said, adding that the positioning operates at 1,016 lines per inch, "which is much higher than a mouse."

Marcum said the Cintiq 15x has twice the pressure sensitivity of the PL-500 and reduces parallax – the distance between the pen tip and the screen image – by 30 percent.

"So with the Cintiq 15x, you perceive the pen tip to be virtually touching the pixels on-screen," he said.

Paper Look and Feel

Wacom says the Cintiq tablet is also 30 percent brighter than the PL-500 and provides a viewing angle that is 160 degrees vertically and horizontally, an improvement from the predecessor's 90 degrees vertically and 120 degrees horizontally.

The Cintig screen also features a textured display surface "which closely emulates the feel of drawing on paper and provides anti-glare benefit," according to Marcum.

Flexible Tablet

Comparable but according to Wacom superior to touch-screen technology, the Cintiq 15x comes with the interactive display, UltraPen with erasure and two programmable side-switches, power supply, power cord, pen holder, installation CD and a bundle CD that includes Corel Painter Classic and PenTools plug-in for Photoshop.

It also connects to a PC via USB or serial ports and includes both cables, Marcum said. The device can also work with digital video interactive (DVI) cable or video graphics array (VGA) cable.

Marcum said response to the Cintiq 15x, which comes with a two-year warranty, has been tremendous.

"We've had to ramp up production to keep up with the demand, and we are very excited about its ability to satisfy a multitude of users' needs," he said.