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Wacom Bamboo Fun Review

by Doug Harman | Mon, 12/11/2007 - 01:00

Best4Reviews rates Wacom's attempt to woo the non-graphics professional with a budget graphics tablet

There's nothing quite like the woody, evergreen perennial bamboo and with "Me Ol' Bamboo", that's what Dick Van Dyke led us to believe in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. 

Well, now 39 years on from that film, and miles away from the plant, Wacom aims to help out and build market with its latest budget level – yep you guessed it – Bamboo graphics tablets. 

The benefits of using such tablets include a more natural and intuitive to use interface than a mouse; suffice to say anyone whose tried one will not want to go back.

The Wacom Bamboo Fun is the bottom rung of three models, the Bamboo, Bamboo One and, of course, this one, the Bamboo Fun. At £140, the Fun still looks a tad pricey to me, so let’s see what it can do.

First up, does size matter? Well, Fun comes in two sizes, the "Small" with a 14.8x9.2cm active area and the "Medium" with a rather better endowed active area of 21.7x13.5cm.

And not wishing to labour the size, wood and bamboo jokes too far, design-wise the Wacom Bamboo Fun is stylish with a contemporarily curvy white and compact pad - making it sylph-like enough to slip out of sight when not being used.

Even better, the whole pad takes up not much more room than a normal mouse mat. So, even relatively small desks will have room for a small amount of, erm, Fun!

Four ExpressKeys orbit a central, larger, Touch Ring that is used to scroll or zoom depending on the program you’re using it with (for example, whether an image-editing program or, say a web browser). 

The small Wacom Bamboo Fun I had to test worked well enough on my 20-inch G5 iMac and can be mapped to work across the screen, so the dimensions of the pad match it. 

The pen is very tactile and ergonomic to use; its small rocker switch performs functions such as scrolling or right mouse clicks and - as I've mentioned - its excellence becomes plainly apparent when used in favour of a mouse.

This is particularly so when using programs such as the supplied Photoshop Elements 5 (version 4 for Macs) and a very nice image manipulation package. 

You also get ArtRage2 to play with. The latter art package is particularly good at bringing out the fun from the Fun - and demonstrates just how quickly you can get a “feel” for working with the pad if you’re new to them.

Verdict: 
Stylish, easy and intuitive to use with a nice software package to boot, the Wacom Bamboo Fun is not exactly an impulse buy at £140. But it still provides a superbentry point into the 'fun' world of the graphics pad.