iBall Design Pen Tablet PF1209 Review
Ok...I was looking for a digital tablet and I know Wacom Intuos3 is the way to go.
But, the price is something that was bothering me. A decent 12x9 A4 Intuos3 will cost you around Rs 20,000/-.
While I was hesitating on it, I came across this IBall PF1209 digital tablet pen. It costs around Rs 9000/- and comes in A4 9x12 size.
Now, the big question for me was, with half the price of Intuos3, will PF1209 compromise on quality too?
I have compared the technical specifications of both products.
Both have a pressure sensitivity levels of 1024, Report rate of 200rps, and tilt angle detection up to 60 degrees. Till this point, technically they are same.
But, the difference was with Resolution. While Intuos boasted about 5000 lpi (lines per inch), PF1209 simply put it at 2000 lpi. Does the reduced resolution affect the sensitivity? There is only one way to find out. By actually testing it.
When I connected the tablet to an XP machine, it started functioning right away. The USB detected the PF1209 as is and worked fine with PaintBrush etc... However, you have to install the supplied drivers to start using the pressure sensitivity option. Once the drivers are installed, you can control the sensitivity to your liking.
Once all drivers are setup, you would find the PF1209 to be performing excellently. It is accurate and responsive. You would need to train yourself a little bit with the pressure sensitivity though.
Another big difference you would find between Intuos3 and PF1209 is that the former has additional button and touch strip on the tablet itself, which makes it very convenient to work with. The PF1209 does not have any buttons on it - but wait, it has a whole horizontal software programmable line near its top, that makes you forget the hardware buttons.
On the top of PF1209 active area, you can find many quick access soft buttons (that you click with the pen to simulate that action). The buttons are New, open, copy, paste, undo, redo etc... All these are programmable through the driver software that ships with the product.
All in all, this is a great product in reasonable price. May be less in price than Intuos 3, but does not lack in features or quality. Highly recommended.
By,
Gopalakrishna Palem
http://www.geocities.com/krishnapg/
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