ZDNET’s key takeaways
- The Wacom One 13 Touch costs $600 and is designed for digital artists.
- This drawing tablet comes with a high-quality, customizable pen that never needs to be charged, and provides a drawing experience like pen to paper.
- Even though it has a color display screen, you still need another device, like a PC or laptop, for it to work. Plus, it’s expensive.
Like everything these days, drawing and sketching can be done using technology. Digital artists and graphic designers heavily rely on devices like drawing tablets to create masterpieces, and Wacom just so happens to be the leader in the game.
Wacom’s new One 13 Touch (which debuted in August 2023) is a display tablet with a glass screen that features a 920 x 1080 Full HD resolution with 99% sRGB and 10-finger multi-touch gestures, giving artists a new dimension of intuitive use and interaction.
Also: The best drawing tablets
Even though I’m no Picasso, to bring you the best tech, I went hands-on with the Wacom One 13 Touch and was super impressed with the overall experience. I’ve tested the Wacom Intuos Pro Display before, and the One 13 Touch was much more intuitive because of its screen.
The device’s smooth screen lets you easily see what you’re working on. Drawing on it actually felt more like a pen and paper, than a stylus to screen. The gesture feature is also a plus: you can utilize several gestures like scrolling, panning, and zooming during the creative process while you’re drawing in a program, or you can turn it off altogether if you’d prefer.
It’s also straightforward to set up: you plug it into your laptop (it comes with various cords for either a Windows or an Apple device), and it connects right away. However, I was disappointed that a pen display still needed to be connected to an external device instead of just working independently. And I was equally as disappointed that the included cables were particularly lengthy.
I could see artists who prefer a screen display but still want to use programs like Adobe or Corel Painter finding the Wacom One 13 Touch more valuable than a regular tablet like the iPad. Plus, the pen is much better than any other drawing stylus: it has 4K pressure sensitivity that supports tilt recognition for calligraphy effects. It also has two side switches for increased productivity, which you can customize depending on the features you use the most.
Also: The best stylus pens
Wacom advertises this tablet as one for aspiring artists, but its $600 price tag seems more suited to intermediate artists who aren’t just testing the waters of digital drawing.
ZDNET’s buying advice
The Wacom One 13 Touch is for digital artists who prefer a pen display. It even includes a three-month trial to Clip Studio Paint Pro, Collaboard, Affinity Designer, and more, plus a 12-month trial of programs like Foxit PDF Editor, Bamboo Paper, and Wacom Notes (which might make the high price tag more reasonable).
All in all, I preferred my experience with the Wacom One 13 Touch over the Wacom Intuos Pro. If you’re looking for a pen-to-paper experience and a multi-touch screen, the Wacom One 13 Touch is a functional, feature-rich drawing tablet.
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