Wack'em Sinteeeeek 13HD Review

Hiya Ryceballs. As some of you know, I was askin for opinions a few journals back about the Wacom Cintiq, you lovely people gave me some great advice and tips and one even went as far as to find me an Australian website with a cheaper price. And she saved me $200, so special thanks to KokoroKanon for doing that. So yes I have been using the Wacom for more than a week now, I didn't wanna write a review until I get the SmudgeGuard, a SmudgeGuard is pretty much looks like a glove cut in half, it looks like a futuristic glove in Minority Report, the reason I wanted a SmudgeGuard is because I tend to get sweaty hands so I did not wanna dirty the Cintiq screen at all, it costed me around $20 to get that. An alternative is just buy a cheap glove and cut off the top three fingers.... you can then use the cut off three fingers glove and put it on your head so you can pretend to be chicken.

OK so was the Cintiq what I expected? Well pretty much yea. Its a nice little screen that you can draw on, did it increase my drawing speed like I wanted? I would say so, because now instead of doing a few lines until it looks right, I can get the line pretty much right straight away, making art, especially line art, much much faster and easiers. As for the coloring I feel its around the same, as my coloring are quite rough anyway so it wasn't like I need to be really accurate. One thing I found thats nice as well is that now I can draw in bed without burning my crotch. In the past when I drew in bed I used to rest my laptop on my lap causing me great fire damage to my little pidgey (Sorry I mean big), but now instead of the heavy laptop, I can just rest my Cintiq there, its light and doesn't burn and it feels like you are just drawing on a notepad.

Alright so thats all the pros, what about the cons? Well I found out that the screen is a bit too bright, I mean thats a good thing if your room is really bright, but for me I like to draw in the dark with shades down and door closed like a creepy Adams Family person. I haven't figured out a way to lower the brightness and I don't really think you can.... Another thing is that I didn't know till I bought it, that it uses a HDMI cable (Well that would explain the HD title in the 13HD....) and my MacBook pro didn't have a HDMI hole, so I had to go out and get a HDMI converter thing and that cost me $30. So yes you need to plug in the HDMI cable as well as a USB cable, and also make sure you got a spare power socket cos you'll need it for the Cintiq, quite a lot of cables. I also sometimes unplug the cables when Im moving the laptop around, then when I plug it back in sometimes the screen resolution for my laptop would go a bit nuts, not to mention the Cintiq's calibration goes a bit off due to the resolution going wild. Well I didn't need to recalibrate it again or anything, I just had to go to settings and change the resolution to something else then change it back and it'll work again. Its very odd.

OK THATS ABOUT IT, Im very happy with my purchase, please get one if you can afford it, I know its not cheap, but if you can find a cheap one, go for it. And please enjoy the photos below.


Cintiq sitting nicely next to his MacBook bro


Here's a little size comparison. Also note that you can adjust the tilt of the Cintiq, I initially thought I would be most comfortable having it just flat like I am drawing on paper, but turns out I like it slightly tilted, it also wasn't that hard to get used to drawing it that way too.


I also realise that you can use the Cintuq as a lightbox! Have an image on screen then on top you trace what you have on paper. OR EVEN do it the other way round, put your paper with a picture on top, and draw over it on your Cintiq.


The screen is so bright I drew with sunglasses on.


Me wearing the SmudgeGuard.


Another picture of me using the SmudgeGuard.

_.