PROS
- Compact but sturdy quality for tight workspace setups and travel
- 4 customizable ExpressKeys + 2 pen side buttons
- Decent pen pressure sensitivity and tablet resolution
- Beginner-friendly price below $100 mark
- Wireless Bluetooth model available
- Long battery life of Bluetooth model
CONS
- Surface is prone to scratches with heavy use
- No tilt response
- No multi-touch support
Intuos is Wacom’s lineup of entry-level drawing tablets, including the Wacom Intuos Small (S) and the Wacom Intuos Medium (M).
The Wacom Intuos S is the perfect pen tablet for beginners, and all artists looking for a highly portable creative pen tablet. It’s more compact and lightweight than the comparable Wacom Intuos Pro Small, and priced way below the pro version. Despite its comparably low price for a Wacom drawing tablet, it’s as sturdy build quality with many features of the pro models.
The pen offers a decent amount of pressure sensitivity and the four on-tablet Express Keys allow you to customize your workflow to make it more speedy and efficient. There’s a built-in pen tray, too, that safely holds your pen in place when you lay it down during editing sessions. With the added comfort of Bluetooth connectivity, you can connect the tablet to your computer at the click of a button.
While the Intuos Medium has built-in Bluetooth standardly, Wacom sell the Intuos Small as a Bluetooth and non-Bluetooth version. You choose.
Both models come with a selection of free software, including Clip Studio Paint Pro, Corel Painter Essentials 7, and Corel AfterShot Pro 3.
With a retail price below the $100 mark, what can you expect of the Wacom Intuos Small? And is the Wacom Intuos S too small?
To answer these questions and more, let’s dive into this Wacom Intuos Small Review and see if the Intuos Small is worth it!
Wacom Intuos Small Review
First Impressions
Wacom’s small Intuos is a slim and light graphics tablet, measuring 7.87 x 6.3 x 0.35 inches. The Wacom Intuos S with Bluetooth weighs 250 g, while the Intuos Small without Bluetooth is 30 grams lighter. The Bluetooth model boast an incredibly good battery life, allowing you to work wireless for up to 15 hours before recharging the device.
The Intuos Small has a smaller footprint as compared to its predecessors but the same size drawing area. A grid of white dots indicates the active area, which now extends closer to the edges. So most part of the tablet surface is actually active area (6 x 3.7 in), with no space wasted. The surface has a subtle texture that enhances the feel of drawing on paper.
On the Intuos Small with Bluetooth, you’ll find a fifth button in the middle of the Express Keys. This button powers the tablet on and off and helps setting up the Bluetooth connection.
The four rubber pads on the rear provide enough grip to hold the device steady, even on smooth surfaces.
Besides in classic black, the Intuos is available with a bottom part in two different colors. A light mint green that Wacom calls Pistachio, and a pastel pink, Berry. Looks pretty cool and gives your tablet the extra touch!
Wacom Intuos Small Review – Pen Technology
The Intuos comes with the Wacom Pen 4K, a pressure sensitive and battery-free stylus. The pen provides 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity and has a rubber grip similar to the Wacom Pro Pen 2, which comes with the higher-end Wacom tablets.
Even though the Pen 4K features double the sensitivity levels than its predecessor, it still doesn’t support tilt response.
If you’re photographer and use the Wacom Intuos Small for Photoshop, you most likely won’t notice the lack of tilt sensitivity when retouching.
On the other hand, if your type of art involves lots of drawing and painting with brushes, tilt response is necessary to correctly simulate the natural characteristics of brush strokes.
And there’s yet another feature that’s not available on the Wacom Pen 4K: the eraser at the other end of the pen. So if you want to erase some lines, you’ll have to pick the eraser tool manually instead of just being able to flip the pen around and remove what you don’t like.
Wacom Intuos Small Review – Creative Experience
The Intuos S is a great tablet for artists who are just getting started. If you’re a first-time graphic tablet user, you’ll find that drawing on a tablet takes some getting used to. Looking at your computer screen while drawing on the tablet a few inches away, can feel odd at first. But usually, that odd feeling will dissipate quickly as you continue using the tablet.
Of course, this requires a bit of a learning curve, but it’s way cheaper as compared to onscreen drawing, like on a Cintiq 16 or Cintiq 22HD.
Since recently, Wacom have also an entry-level drawing tablet with screen at a more beginner-friendly price, the Wacom One.
- Wacom One vs Wacom Intuos Small
Apart from the added benefit of an integrated screen to draw on, the Wacom One brings some other advanced features that the Wacom Intuos S does not have.
While both the Wacom One Pen and the Intuos Pen 4k have 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity, the One Pen supports up to 60 degrees of tilt recognition. The Wacom One features double the resolution of 5,080 lpi, as compared to 2,540 lines per inch of the Intuos tablet. On the other hand, the Wacom One doesn’t have any built-in Express Keys.
Instead of dragging the cursor across the screen with your mouse, all you need to do on a tablet is move your hand to the corresponding point on the screen. As such, the Intuos drawing tablet will be the biggest time-saver for all artists who do a lot of intricate brushwork.
Good Pressure Sensitivity
The biggest plus of the Wacom Intuos is the pressure sensitivity of the pen. While tapping the pen on the tablet surface corresponds to a mouse click, pen pressure will impact stroke width, color opacity, and more. Applying more pressure will create smaller, darker lines. Reducing the pressure makes the line wider, with more edge gradient.
While this will not spare you the effort to change brush types and sizes, it will considerably cut down the time needed to switch between flow and transparency settings.
This feature is immediately obvious for artists doing lots of creative painting, e.g. in ZBrush, Adobe Illustrator, Krita or Gimp. But it is also of great use for photo editing, because tools like Dodge and Burn are pressure sensitive, too. Pressing harder or softer will create lighter or darker dodges and burns – a great benefit for photographers when retouching images in Lightroom or Photoshop.
You can use either the Wacom Intuos Small or Medium for photo editing. Both models are highly accurate and responsive, and easy to use for this purpose.
On the downside, the pen can leave tiny scratches on the tablet’s surface when used heavily. Also, the surface attracts fingerprints easily.
Free Software Bundle
On a lighter note, you’ll get a bundle of free software when purchasing and registering an Intuos. At the time of this review, Wacom provide a 90-day free trial of Corel Painter Essentials 7 and Corel AfterShot Pro 3, as well as a 2-year license for Clip Studio Paint Pro.
Wacom Intuos Small Review – Customization Options
The four ExpressKeys at the top of the Intuos Small are probably the most useful customization options to speed your workflow. The keys can be programmed to a variety of commands and shortcuts. They are customizable on a per-app basis, meaning you can assign them one function in a specific drawing program and different function in another program.
As such, you can set the Express Keys to keyboard shortcuts or perform mouse clicks, actions like scrolling and zooming, and on-screen controls.
The two side buttons on the Wacom Pen 4K offer the same amount of customization. You can set the buttons to act as a right click or scroll wheel, allowing you to use the pen more freely just like a mouse. Besides, you can also adjust the sensitivity of the pen tip to fit your way of drawing.
Wacom Intuos Small vs Pro
The Wacom Intuos Small and the Wacom Intuos Pro Small offer about the same size active area and Bluetooth connectivity. However, the Intuos Pro Small offers multi-touch functionality and double the resolution of the Intuos Small. Besides that, the Intuos Pro S comes with Wacom’s Pro Pen 2, which is responsive to 8,192 levels of pressure (both tilt and eraser) and up to 60 degrees of tilt.
Tilt response is vital when working with drawing programs that emulate the features of natural brushes. This is especially important for artists whose artworks involve a lot of drawing and painting.
Apart from those hardware differences, the Intuos Pro offers more customization options in the software and a couple more accessories. The driver for the Wacom Intuos Small is basically the same as the one for the small Intuos Pro, but with a slightly different interface and the extra option to adjust the pen pressure curve. With the regular Wacom Intuos, you can only adapt pressure sensitivity.
The Intuos Pro allows you to replace the standard pen nibs with felt nibs (softer than the standard nibs), or to replace the entire pen with a Wacom Pro Pen slim or Pro Pen 3D.
→ Wacom Pen Compatibility & Replacement Pens
If you have an Intuos Pro Medium or Intuos Pro Large, you’ll also have the choice between different texture surface sheets (Regular, Smooth or Rough) for varying resistance . Unfortunately, Wacom do not offer interchangeable texture sheets yet at the time of the review. Hopefully something that is to come in the future.
Wacom Intuos Pro Paper Edition
On top of that, there’s also the Intuos Pro Paper Edition in Medium and Large that combines digital tablet and real paper sketching. It comes with a pack of paper sheets and a Finetip Ink Pen that allows the tablet to record your real-paper drawings and store them on the tablet’s memory for subsequent digital editing.
Even though the Intuos Small is only about one third of the price of an Intuos Pro Small, it offers great bang for the buck. However, there are few features that set off the Pro model from the regular one. If you’re teetering between both and can stretch your budget to afford the Pro model, have a look at our Intuos Pro Small Review before making your final decision.
Comparison Chart: Wacom Intuos Small vs Pro
| Intuos Small | Intuos Pro Small | |
|---|---|---|
| Active area | 6.0 x 3.7 in | 6.2 x 3.9 in |
| Pen pressure | 4096 levels | 8192 levels, both tip and eraser |
| Resolution | 2540 lpi | 5080 lpi |
| Tilt response | No | ±60 levels |
| ExpressKeys | 4 | 6 ExpressKeys + 1 Touch Ring |
| Multi-touch support | No | Yes |
| Bluetooth connectivity | Bluetooth Classic (model CTL-4100WL) | Bluetooth Classic |
| Stylus | Wacom Pen 4K | Wacom Pro Pen 2 |
| Compatibility | Windows 7, 8.1 or 10, MacOS X 10.11 or later, android smartphone or tables (OS version 6.0 and above) with OTG features | Windows 7, 8 or 10, MacOS 10.10 or later |
| Dimensions | 7.9 x 6.3 x 0.35 in (200 x 160 x 8.8 mm) | 12.6 x 8.2 x 0.5 in (320 x 208 x 12 mm) |
| Weight | 230g (8.1 oz) without Bluetooth; 250g (8.8 oz) with Bluetooth | 450g (0.99 lb) |
| Price | Around US$80 (without Bluetooth) | Around US$250 |
Wacom Intuos Small Review – Compatibility Check
Wacom Intuos Small Review
Overall Rating
In conclusion, the Wacom Intuos Small is a great tablet for beginning artists who look for a good responsive device with customization options. It’s also an excellent upgrade for creators coming from an older tablet or looking for a more portable alternative to a Pro model. In both cases, Wacom’s Intuos S is a good place to start – and competitively priced.
The optional Bluetooth connectivity makes up for the lack of gesture-based touch support, and the free software bundle adds some extra points to the grand total.
The footprint of the Intuos Small takes up very little desk space, the device is lightweight and portable, still as sturdy and durable as all Wacom products. All in all, a solid foundation that is hard to beat!
PROS
- Compact but sturdy quality for tight workspace setups and travel
- 4 customizable ExpressKeys + 2 pen side buttons
- Decent pen pressure sensitivity and tablet resolution
- Beginner-friendly price below $100 mark
- Wireless Bluetooth model available
- Long battery life of Bluetooth model
CONS
- Surface is prone to scratches with heavy use
- No tilt response
- No multi-touch support
Frequently Asked Questions
Which size Wacom Intuos you should get largely depends on your way of editing, and maybe the money you are willing to spend. 😄
The Intuos Pro Large measures 16.8 in by 11.2 in. The dimensions of the medium-size pen tablet are 13.2 in by 8.5 in, and the small Intuos Pro is 10.6 in by 6.7 in. All models are super-slim, with a height of 0.3 in.
If you teeter between Wacom Intuos Pro Medium or Large, then your choice depends mainly on your way of editing. Do you create digital artworks where you mostly make long, sweeping brush strokes? Then consider the larger model.
If you can’t decide between Wacom Intuos Pro Medium or Small, then portability is the deciding factor. Do you want to carry your tablet around and be able to slip it easily into your bag? If so, you might want to get the small Intuos.
In terms of pricing, the Wacom Intuos Pro Medium is around US $ $380, the Intuos Pro Small around US $250, and the Large version around US $500.
As a bottom line, the Intuos Pro Medium tablet is indeed the happy medium between size and price, and will be perfect for most creative needs and workspace settings.
On a final note, if you like to start your digital artworks by sketching on paper, then check out the Intuos Pro Paper Edition.
Contrary to the Wacom Intuos, the Wacom One is a drawing tablet with built-in screen. Therefore, it retails for a much higher price than the Wacom Intuos, which doesn’t have an integrated display. Apart from being entry-level devices, the Wacom One and the Intuos don’t have much in common.
A Wacom product that is more similar to the Wacom Intuos is the One by Wacom. Despite its confusing naming, the One by Wacom is not comparable to the Wacom One at all.
The One by Wacom is, like the Intuos Small, a great tablet for beginners and first-time graphic tablet users. It’s more basic than the Intuos, but still feature excellent specs for a beginners’ tablet. Check out our One by Wacom Review that includes a detailed comparison between the One by Wacom and the Wacom Intuos!
The Wacom Intuos lineup replaces the Wacom Draw tablets, which were released in 2015. Wacom seem to replace their products quite frequently. So if the company sticks to their usual release schedule, the next update will come in three years time.
As for the tablet itself, it most likely will last you for your entire lifetime. Wacom tablets are incredibly sturdy and durable. The lower-end products might show some scratching on their surfaces upon heavy use, but nothing that would impact their usability.
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My name is Angie and I’m a self-taught digital artist. On this blog, I am sharing my knowledge and discussing the best software and hardware for different artistic needs. My desire is to offer options for all creative stages and budgets so that everyone can follow their dream and create art!
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