The Digital Pen war is just started! (Wacom v Microsoft v Apple)

[Draconica5]

As my prediction at earlier this year, a digital pen war will be started. But I had never expected that this war will be a nuclear war!!!
(My older thread: http://forums.windowscentral.com/mi...-trig-digital-pen-war-coming-wacom-apple.html)

I made a chart to compare some digital pen tablet in the market right now.

Brand	Tablet type	Tilt support	Pressure Sensitive	Weight	Starting price
Wacom Intuos/Bamboo	Pad only	No	1024 lvl	(290g to 480g) + laptop	$100
Wacom Intuos Pro	Pad only	Yes	2048 lvl	(660g to 1800g) + laptop	$300
Wacom Cintiq 13HD	Screen Display	Yes	2048 lvl	1200g + laptop	$1000
Wacom Cintiq Companion	Tablet PC	Yes	2048 lvl	1700g	$1200
Microsoft Surface 3	Tablet PC	No	256 lvl	621g	$500 + $50 (stylus not included)
Microsoft Surface Pro 3	Tablet PC	No	256 lvl	798g	$800
Apple Ipad Pro	"Tablet PC" kinda	Yes	unknown	712g	$800 + $100 (stylus not included)

In case you aren't similar with digital pen, there're 2 hardware specs that all the artist care about: pressure sensitive & tilt sensitive. That're the 2 keys element that helping the digital pen get onto the high-end realistic feel when using it. And for the portable, the weight is really important too.

For the first time ever, there're other company beside Wacom that have the stylus with tilt support.This is really a big and a good news!
The high level of pressure sensitive aren't really matter since some Surface Pro 3 artists had been proved that, but having more is alway better.
And even though Ipad Pro is kinda overpriced, but it's still cheaper and more portable than than those Wacom Cintiq!

Now I really hope that Microsoft will released the next gen N-trig Surface Pen with Tilt support on Surface Pro 4.

 

[worldspy99]

MSFT needs Surface Pro 4 with N-trig Surface Pen with Tilt support for sure. But more than that add LTE to the damn device!

 

[bo_woods]

In order for this iPad to truly hurt the Surface, iOS is going to need more high end creative professional software... As far as I know iOS doesn't have toonboom, Autodesk maya, adobe flash professional, premier, after effects, etc... Drawing still images in Photoshop are about as good as it gets for creative professionals...

And why brag about the iPad Pro being able to edit two streams of 4k video at once, because is there any software currently on iOS that can do that? Also how can you brag about something like the handling of 4k video, when not only does the tablet not offer file system access, but the device comes in 32 & 128gb variants without any memory expansions.. Without those things the experience od doing such work would be very "toy-ish". 4k video isn't light, and many people I believe would want the transfers of media between their editing device and camera to be seamless, whether they are using micro sd's, flash drives, or the cloud

The iPad is indeed imo a great looking device, it just doesn't at all appear to be a Surface killer

The iPad of course will indeed sell, and land in the hands of many productivity minded consumers but IMHO, I don't see it replacing anybody's Surface 3 or Surface Pro 3, especially at the price it comes at...

Just my opinionated 2 cents

 

[Draconica5]

In order for this iPad to truly hurt the Surface, iOS is going to need more high end creative professional software... As far as I know iOS doesn't have toonboom, Autodesk maya, adobe flash professional, premier, after effects, etc... Drawing still images in Photoshop are about as good as it gets for creative professionals...

You should rewatch the ads for Ipad Pro. 2D painting and drawing don't need a high end PC.
They're mainly target the 2D Artist who need the high-end stylus to draw, paint and calligraphy, not Video Editor or Animator!

 

[bo_woods]

You should rewatch the ads for Ipad Pro. 2D painting and drawing don't need a high end PC.
They're mainly target the 2D Artist who need the high-end stylus to draw, paint and calligraphy, not Video Editor or Animator!

I understand this completely... And that is exactly why it wont hurt the Surface

 

[MikeX74]

In order for this iPad to truly hurt the Surface, iOS is going to need more high end creative professional software... As far as I know iOS doesn't have toonboom, Autodesk maya, adobe flash professional, premier, after effects, etc... Drawing still images in Photoshop are about as good as it gets for creative professionals...

And why brag about the iPad Pro being able to edit two streams of 4k video at once, because is there any software currently on iOS that can do that? Also how can you brag about something like the handling of 4k video, when not only does the tablet not offer file system access, but the device comes in 32 & 128gb variants without any memory expansions.. Without those things the experience od doing such work would be very "toy-ish". 4k video isn't light, and many people I believe would want the transfers of media between their editing device and camera to be seamless, whether they are using micro sd's, flash drives, or the cloud

The iPad is indeed imo a great looking device, it just doesn't at all appear to be a Surface killer

The iPad of course will indeed sell, and land in the hands of many productivity minded consumers but IMHO, I don't see it replacing anybody's Surface 3 or Surface Pro 3, especially at the price it comes at...

Just my opinionated 2 cents

Who said it was supposed to be a Surface-killer?

 

[Reflexx]

You should rewatch the ads for Ipad Pro. 2D painting and drawing don't need a high end PC.
They're mainly target the 2D Artist who need the high-end stylus to draw, paint and calligraphy, not Video Editor or Animator!

Serious 2D wwork with multiple layers and filtering does require a decent PC and RAM.

 

[Topataco]

Digital pen wars..? As far as I've seen Wacom>>>>N-Trig(Surface)>>Apple Pencil. Pity that the SP3 doesn't have tilt support, although the battery last more than the stated 1 Hour battery life for the Apple Pencil. Wacom is still king of digital ink and N-Trig is still the poor man's Wacom; Apple Pencil is neither of these

 

[Reflexx]

Digital pen wars..? As far as I've seen Wacom>>>>N-Trig(Surface)>>Apple Pencil. Pity that the SP3 doesn't have tilt support, although the battery last more than the stated 1 Hour battery life for the Apple Pencil. Wacom is still king of digital ink and N-Trig is still the poor man's Wacom; Apple Pencil is neither of these

I wouldn't call the N-Trig a poor man's Wacom. And this is coming from someone that had a healthy amount of skepticism when it was announced that the SP3 was going to use N-Trig instead of Wacom.

Yes, the Wacom pens on the Cintiqs are stellar. However, I have noticed that the N-Trig has it beat when it comes to how close the nib is to the digital ink. It's pretty spot on.

I do hope to see N-Trig's capabilities grow. Wacom has a better setup when it comes to things like button mapping. It also has tilt sensitivity, which N-Trig lacks. But the quality of output you can get from N-Trig is pretty competitive.

Edit:

...now that I think more about it...

Maybe the SP3 can be kind of a poor man's Cintiq. It's just such a great product it's hard to think of it as a "poor man's" anything.

But the Cintiq's are just crazy expensive.

It's like saying that a Porsche is a poor man's Lamborghini.

 

[bo_woods]

Who said it was supposed to be a Surface-killer?

Quite a few articles, and threads here questioned how the iPad Pro would affect the Surface and this post was me sharing my opinion on that

 

[bo_woods]

You should rewatch the ads for Ipad Pro. 2D painting and drawing don't need a high end PC.
They're mainly target the 2D Artist who need the high-end stylus to draw, paint and calligraphy, not Video Editor or Animator!

Video editing is indeed something that is bragged about by Apple of the iPad Pro.. I believe at some point during the keynote, or maybe an ad that "it can edit two streams of 4k video at once"

 

[Jaredallister]

Digital pen wars..? As far as I've seen Wacom>>>>N-Trig(Surface)>>Apple Pencil. Pity that the SP3 doesn't have tilt support, although the battery last more than the stated 1 Hour battery life for the Apple Pencil. Wacom is still king of digital ink and N-Trig is still the poor man's Wacom; Apple Pencil is neither of these

Stated 1 hour battery life? According to Apple, the Apple Pencil gets 12 hours battery life.

 

[DoctorSaline]

Tbh, I'm not expecting Surface Pro 4 to improve on anything other than Skylake processors and large screen size of 14" maybe.
I think Microsoft has been caught off-guard again with Apple Pencil. Although, I haven't tried any of them, from what I saw, Apple pencil seems to have better response times or latency periods than Surface Pen. Also, tilt sensitivity is a plus. And, yes, I agree that Surface Pen needs to improve on pressure sensitivity levels, tilt sensitivity and smaller latency periods.