Wacom Bamboo Touch Tablet
- Multi-Touch input for intuitive control
- Use a single finger for navigation and selection or multiple fingers for gestures
- Four user-defined ExpressKeys for shortcuts or clicks
- Simple gestures make it easy to scroll, zoom, rotate and go backward or forward
- Interactive tutorial helps you make the most of your Bamboo
Product Description
Bamboo Touch lets you add the power of Multi-Touch to virtually any computer, so you can navigate, scroll, and work with simple gestures, only with more space to maneuver than on a standard mobile device or laptop trackp… More >>
There are 6 Comments to "Wacom Bamboo Touch Tablet"
I own both a new 17″ MacBook Pro and a 24″ iMac, and with the advent of gesture support on the MBP trackpad I’ve often wished for a multitouch trackpad I could use on the iMac.
And with the Wacom Bamboo Touch, my wish has been granted… mostly.
The Bamboo Touch is a multitouch trackpad, not a pen input device as is most of Wacom’s line. If you want pen capabilities, order the Bamboo Pen and Touch instead, but be advised that the pen-enabled version is much larger than the Touch by about 2″ in both directions. That may not sound like much, but it takes up significantly more desktop real estate than does the Touch.
The Bamboo Touch supports all of the standard single finger and two finger gestures: clicking, right clicking, dragging, scrolling, zooming, and rotating. It does not, however, understand three and four finger gestures and swipes. This lack is compensated somewhat by the addition of four custom buttons on the side of the trackpad. The additional buttons are helpful, but inexplicably covered with a glossy black plastic that attracts fingerprints like mad.
Build quality is very good, though I miss the silky smooth feel of the glass trackpad on the MBP. Tracking is fast and accurate, though the surface is somewhat sensitive. As such, one must place it off to the side since (unlike the MBP) there’s no setting that tells the device to ignore “accidental” inputs. One other nit is that if you’re dragging something and pause, the operation seems to time out, often dropping the item where it wasn’t wanted. This is a pain when attempting to drag items into spring-loaded, automatically opening folders.
Also on the negative side, the device has a very long USB cord that just piles up on your desk if you have a Mac or other keyboard with built-in USB. Better to have shipped with a foot long “tail” for desktop use, and added a USB extender should one need to reach further.
All in all, the device is recommended and hopefully many of my small nits will be corrected in a future software driver update.
[EDIT]
After using the pad (and talking to Wacom support) it turns out that the “timeout” issue mentioned above isn’t a timeout issue at all, but stems from two problems: First, the “active” area of the trackpad is smaller than you think, delineated by the light gray lines in the photo. Thus it’s fairly easy to drag something past the line and lose control of it.
Second, unlike the trackpad on the MBP you can NOT pick up your fingers and reposition them during a drag lock. Pick them up and you’re done. Period. This means when dragging you have to be careful where you start from on the pad, otherwise you can easily run out of room.
Rating: 4 / 5
I have a MacBook Air at home and I use a PC at work. I’ve become very accustomed to using a touch pad with multi-touch and gestures at home and decide to get the Bamboo Touch for work. I also have a Bamboo Craft touch pad and pen tablet that I use for drawing with my MacBook Air so I was somewhat familiar with Wacom products.
The Bamboo touch works just as advertised. I am quite happy with it at work on my Windows XP workstation. My only criticism is that it’s not quite as smooth as the touch pad on my MacBook Air. Scrolling seems a little more “choppy” with Windows and the Bamboo Touch. It’s not bad however and having the two finger swipe gesture is well worth the purchase of the Bamboo Touch. Also the pinching and rotate gestures work well in application that will use them but just not quite as smoothly as they do on my Mac. Also for some reason it tends to inadvertently select text on occasion when I touch the pad to move the mouse pointer. This could be just me getting used to using the touch pad but this almost never happens on the Mac for me.
All in all, with those minor caveats, if you are looking for a decent touch pad on a desktop system with mutli-touch and gestures this will do the trick. It works quite well, just not as smooth as the touch pad on a MacBook.
[Edit] OK I would increase my rating to 5 stars if I could. Modifying the “Double-Tap Time” settings has pretty much eliminated the inadvertent text selecting I mentioned. Also adjusting the “Scrolling Speed” setting has made window and browser scrolling seem much more smooth and responsive. The Bamboo Touch works excellent.
Rating: 4 / 5
I was hoping for something to take the stress off my forearm and reduce the risks of CPS. I have a vertical mouse already. This product created more stress than a regular mouse. I was surprised by this …and disappointed. I would look for a way to try it before buying it.
Rating: 3 / 5
It is well built and does what it is supposed to do. The description is quite clear about what Wacom means by multitouch, and if in doubt, Wacom has video demos of the multitouch in action on their web site. It doesn’t claim to work like a Mac tablet, so I don’t know why people ding it for not working like a Mac tablet. The 5′ cable is too is a bit short for me, so I’m getting an extension cable D-Link DUB-C3AE USB 2.0 Extension Cable (10 Feet).
Note: with Win7 64-bit, do not use the 521-6 drivers from the Wacom site – not stable! The drivers from the CD work fine.
My tweaks:
- I put a patch of blue painters tape on the second and fourth buttons so I could distinguish them by feel.
- I kept accidentally touching a second spot, so I disabled right and left second-touching. Otherwise I really like multitouch.
- I enabled drag lock. Trying to select w/out it will drive you batty!
- It is easy enough to use the multitouch right click, so I switched that button to be middle click.
- The button config options are limited, so I use X-Mouse Button Control to get the button functionality that I want.
A few dings:
- It should have better button config options so I don’t have to use X-Mouse.
- It would be nice to be able to adjust the touch sensitivity. I am inclined to hover my hand over the tablet at times, but I had to stop doing that because sometimes it would register a touch even though I didn’t feel a touch.
- The tablet doesn’t work for UAC popups, so I switch to the keyboard for those.
Rating: 5 / 5
I received the Bamboo Touch Tablet as a Christmas present from my Mac-loving son. I have PCs. I believe that part of the reason my son gave me this tablet was so that I could experience the joys of the multi-touch input. I have indeed experienced it and love it. The tablet is extremely easy to use. It is very responsive to my touch. My only complaint with this tablet is that in order to use the drag function I find that most of the time I need to depress the fourth button with my left hand while dragging with my right index finger. (In the tutorial it demonstrates being able to use just the index finger. When I practiced in the tutorial, that worked; however,in actual use I am not successful when doing that.) I love the slim design of the Tablet and find it a more portable option to carry with me when I travel with my laptop than having to carry a mouse since the tablet is flat and can easily slip into my bag with my computer.
I am very pleased with this tablet and am very happy that my son chose to give it to me.
Rating: 5 / 5
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