Hands On With the Wacom Creative Stylus for the iPad

The Wacom Intuos Creative Stylus, which retails for $99.95, comes with 2048 levels of pressure sensitivity and palm-rejection technology. It pairs up with your iPad via Bluetooth 4.0. But who gives a damn about specs. The real question on my mind was: Can I really draw with this thing?

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s take a look inside the box, shall we?

What’s Inside

Wacom has a very Apple-esque approach to their packaging design. Inside the diminutive but stylish box, you’ll find the Wacom Creative stylus, one AAAA battery and two extra rubber nibs. Also included is a brief pamphlet (aka QuickStart guide) to get you up and running. Pretty straightforward.

The stylus case, complete with the Wacom branding, is made of a sturdy plastic that doesn’t feel cheap. The top of the stylus unscrews, allowing you to insert the battery, which is placed with its positive terminal towards the stylus tip. With the battery properly inserted, you’ll see a small blinking blue light right above the rocker switch.

The Feel

The Wacom Creative stylus feels substantial in my hands, much like a standard Sharpie marker does. Most of the weight on the stylus is towards the base. Its contoured form makes it easy to grip and hold. There’s even a rocker switch on the side of the stylus, similar to Wacom’s traditional stylus devices. The tip of the device is firm, yet squishy when resting the tip on a surface.

Testing

Pairing the Wacom stylus with my iPad Mini Retina was simple and straightforward. Simply activate “Bluetooth” on your iPad and your stylus should work. For my brief tests with the device, I used the Wacom Creative in conjunction with a drawing app called Procreate. The Wacom Creative did a solid job overall in keeping up with my mark making – whether it was cross hatching or drawing circles. For broad strokes it works well. For very short strokes and dots and dashes, response was a little uneven. (Zooming in on the canvas did help, though.)

I’ve recorded a video that should provide better insight into how the device responds to my mark making.

Can I Use It?

The short of it is yes, it is possible. The Wacom Creative stylus, when coupled with pressure-sensitive aware apps like Autodesk’s Sketchbook Pro or Procreate, gives you the ability to create lines that have varying line width. It feels very comfortable in my hands. With Procreate, the Wacom Creative stylus is about as good as it gets for drawing on the iPad.

Will it replace a Cintiq? No.

And for me, that response has to do with the inherent flaw of ALL iPads – they never really supported pressure sensitivity well in the first place. The bulbous tip on the Wacom Creative works well when making broad strokes. But, in my testing, I found it more difficult to create short, staccato like marks, which I’m prone to do within my own work.

To sum up, the Wacom Creative stylus won’t replace my existing desktop hardware, but then again, it wasn’t really meant to. Taken for what it can do, though, it’s now my go-to device for drawing on the iPad.

-Krishna

Krishna January 9, 2014 creative, drawing on iPad, ProCreate, stylus, Wacom