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Provides: Touch and Tablet functionality
Developer: Wacom
Minimum Requirements: Mac OS X v10.4.8, color display, powered USB port
Price: $69-$199
Availability: Now

Wacom’s Bamboo tablet line has been known for great functionality for those of us who don’t want, don’t need or just plain can’t afford to spend the money on an Intuos or other professional level tablet. Now, Wacom has refreshed their Bamboo line of tablets, adding touch functionality, among other things, in the process.

I honestly couldn’t have picked a better word than “refreshed” to describe what Wacom did to their new Bamboo tablets.  Indeed, the new and improved Bamboo line is refreshing.  They’ve taken note of where the world of computing is headed, and now almost every one one of the Bamboo tablets supports touch based input.

Think of it like a giant touchpad; not that different from what you might be used to on a notebook. In fact, they not only support touch, they support multitouch.  Go ahead, give it more than one finger.  Okay, that came out wrong, because, you likely won’t be giving Wacom the finger on any of their tablets, but you know what I mean.

There are a few models.  The Bamboo Pen and Touch (pictured above), the Bamboo touch (touch only), Bamboo Craft (pen and touch), Bamboo Fun (silver, medium sized, pen and touch) and finally the Bamboo pen, which doesn’t like to be touched (pen only).  The standard Bamboo Pen and Touch is really the sweet spot in this lineup.

What can you do with it?  You can move the mouse, like you’d expect.  And there’s pinching for zooming, and two fingered scrolling.  You can tap with two fingers to right click too.  But, sadly, it’s not an exact emulation of the Apple touchpad that comes standard on all MacBook Pros.  So don’t go three-finger-swiping, nothing will happen.  But Wacom does have some refreshing ideas that differ from Apple’s usage of multitouch.

Take, for example, left and right side tapping.  If you’re using one finger to move the mouse around, like normal, you can tap with another finger to the left to gesture a left click, or an additional finger to the right of the finger still on the tablet to gesture for a right click.  Now that I’m used to this gesture, I really wish the MacBook Pro supported this as well.  Not that it’s hard to lift all fingers off and then tap, it’s just easier, and perhaps makes more sense this way.

That said, it really does sadden me that it doesn’t support the three finger gestures that MacBooks support.  The good news is that I believe this to be a software limitation, not hardware.  Should Wacom decide that it wants add more gesture support, all they’d really have to do is update the Preference pane that you’re required to install before using your Bamboo tablet.  I really hope they do eventually add three or more finger gesture support.  More gestures are always better, and have customizability in what actions they actually trigger would be great!

I’m very happy to see touch support added to this line of tablets.  It really just makes sense.  Let’s be honest, tablets are great, but they aren’t everyone’s cup of tea when it comes to a pointing device.  While I’d rather use a tablet to sketch something, or make a selection in Photoshop, I don’t necessarily want to use it for everything.  That’s where the addition of touch support really helps.  I’m used to using a touchpad on a MacBook for navigation; gestures for zooming and the like just make sense.  Previous Bamboo tablets where great devices, but I think the new line has been noticably improved.  If you’re in the market for a feature rich tablet without breaking the bank, the Bamboo tablet is it.