Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch graphics tablet

Using the Bamboo Pen & Touch graphics tablet with the supplied wireless pen the user can draw, write or paint on screen, supplementing or replacing the mouse.

Like all tablets it's particularly good for people practicing digital art or design. The device is nearly 28cm long and 17.5cm wide, and it's rather svelte at just under a centimetre thick.

The usable area is large at nearly 20cm by 15cm, which as with other tablets corresponds to the computer monitor. This can take a bit of getting used to because the position of the pen on the tablet is ‘absolute' – move the pen to the top-right of the tablet and the pointer moves to the top-right of the screen, and so on, unlike with a mouse whose physical position doesn't matter.

The device connects to the computer using the supplied USB cable, but it's possible to buy a separate wireless adapter (£36) which we also tried, and which worked well. In that case the cable is used to charge the tablet's internal battery. The pen uses electromagnetic induction to power itself, so no battery is required, and a small strap on the tablet's side is used to hold it when it's not in use.

With the tablet are supplied several programs that sit in an organising panel on-screen called the Bamboo Dock. These range from the useful, such as a notepad, to the fun (several little, quite fun games) to the completely pointless, such as the fake tattooing program. Both the programs and the installation process were very nicely designed and friendly, though slightly spoiled by careless misspellings (‘tatoo', and ‘loose' for ‘lose', for instance). The pen is capable of distinguishing between 1,000 levels of pressure, so when using a painting program, lots of dynamic range is possible, from lightly brushing the screen to daubing it with paint. Four buttons along the side can be customised so they activate various functions.

Several models are available – the one we reviewed was the Pen & Touch, which can also be controlled by running one or more fingers over it, just like a huge laptop touchpad, though we found the pen more useful. A cheaper Pen version is only pen-controlled, and a more expensive Fun version has a different look (silver rather than black) and comes with more software.

Given its large size, the Bamboo Pen & Touch is great value for people who want to paint and draw on screen, or who just want an alternative to the mouse.