Wacom has been in the touchscreen and tablet industry for years, and is the manufacturer supplying the majority of screens for Tablet PCs. With the rise of interest in Tablet PCs, Wacom's local branch was keen to let us try out one of its newer standalone touchscreen products: the Cintiq.

Taken on its LCD merits alone, the Cintiq is borderline and pales in comparison to other similar sized models on the market. It has 18.1in display, 210 cd/m2 brightness and a 300:1 contrast ratio, all of which is passable, but it's the underlying tablet technology that make this attractive to the artist or
CAD operator.

The active digitiser technology under the Cintiq 18SX's screen is superb, with much better depth and resolution than is found in a Tablet PC. The screen only responds to the bundled stylus' nib so you can rest your hand on the display without affecting your work. The digitiser can detect the nib's movements from 0.5cm from the screen surface, and scans 205 times a second.

The pen can be used for general mousing (as it comes with two buttons, or you can just tap the screen), and its flexibility in drawing is superb. As well as the high scan rate, the digitiser also has 512 levels of depth, so the screen responds to the closeness, or pressure, applied by the pen. This can modulate the effect of pen strokes from fine, hair-like lines to thick brushstrokes.

The Cintiq's solid stand can also be titled or laid almost flat, or you can remove the screen from the stand and put it on your lap. The screen features 160° horizontal and vertical viewing angles. All of this allows plenty of flexibility in the way you draw and work with the screen, and we found the response time made for free and fluid actions. It's an intuitive way of working.

Obviously at its price point the Cintiq 18SX is not for the idle doodler: it's for serious
artists and CAD operators, but it's also finding a huge market in vertical applications such as the medical industry.