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Wacom doesn't project any rated coverage claims for sRGB, but designers working with purely web-based art will be pleased with its 100% sRGB coverage (see below). Despite all of the well-designed compartments for the spare parts and positioning of the cradle, compared to the pen, it feels somewhat cheap. Especially when you factor in the cost of everything with the quality build of nearly every other single feature, the cradle could use some extra love, even if it works just fine as is. It just feels like an afterthought. Wacom Cintiq Pro 27: Pen Pressure and In-Use Maybe that’s not ideal, from a space-saving standpoint, but to be that close to a high-res screen when editing video is a distinct advantage. Tasks that sometimes have me leaning forward and squinting at my iMac require no such effort on the Cintiq Pro 27. And to those who feel that 27 inches seems like a downgrade from the previous 32-inch model, it’s really hard for me to imagine more screen space being practical—this is a massive work surface as is. At some point, you’re simply sacrificing desk space.
However, we did find that not all of the Cintiq Pro 27’s gestures would translate to every program. This isn’t necessarily a problem that can be blamed on the display itself, but it’s something to be aware of when preparing to work with it. You can also customize the Express Keys to control a variety of actions—each button can essentially access the same range of Actions, and the Express Key panels house four buttons each. I found myself programming keyboard modifiers here and speeding up my workflows quite a bit—much of what I need to do in the Adobe suite begins with the Option or Command key. The Cintiq Pro 27 boasts a 30-bit color gamut, with 98% DCI-P3 and 99% Adobe RGB, as well as HDR Gamma support. As with other Wacom Cintiq models, the Pro 27’s parallax is generally very minimal, regardless of the angle you’re working with. The Cintiq Pro 27 is a beast of a peripheral that weighs in at about 36 pounds when you include the official adjustable stand (the Cintiq itself can optionally be mounted onto a VESA-style arm). So while it is technically smaller than the Cintiq Pro 24, it still feels bigger. Effectively, these improvements to the Cintiq make it more than just a tablet, but an actual reference monitor too, giving users the functionality of what has typically required two separate devices in one.
If you get one of these, just be prepared for the space this thing takes up. During my actual testing, it’s safe to say I had very limited space and it wasn’t the most ergonomic of environments. Naturally, as a multi-touch display, the Cintiq Pro 27 is very responsive when using either the pen or your fingers to work on designs. At times, these levels of sensitivity can actually be a frustration when in use – if you’re drawing with the pen while multi-touch is enabled, for example, it’s not uncommon to start a pen stroke and then have it evaporate because you’ve accidentally grazed the display with your finger. Arguably placing it along the side of your dominant hand shouldn’t be an issue as you won’t be using that hand to access the buttons behind the grip anyway since it will be occupied holding the pen, but since I was planning on messing with positions a lot while using the device, I opted to leave the mount on the top left side of the screen. The Cintiq Pro 27 showed good brightness at 344 nits, and its 991:1 contrast ratio effectively matched its 1,000:1 rating by Wacom.
The Cintiq Pro 27’s screen was a little dimmer than I expected which resulted in colors appearing to be a bit muted, but the display still has incredibly great resolution and color accuracy. The grip and control buttons on the sides are pretty useful — if for nothing else other than repositioning the screen — and the Pro Pen 3, while not the most impressive looking, was incredibly accurate and handled exceptionally well, especially since the nib didn’t have the trademark “wobble” that’s present in nearly every other pen on the market. Finally, the entire surface supports multi-touch, so you can leverage the entire screen as a touchpad for hand gestures for additional workflow enhancements should you desire. As mentioned, the Cintiq does support touch but I could take or leave them. For the most part, I left them. After some initial testing of the touch capabilities, which do work, I never felt there was a scenario where using them instead of the programmable buttons or my nearby keyboard was a better option. You also have access to a radial menu—the top Express Key on the left, by default, calls up the radial menu onscreen. In fact, there are two radial menus—one called Radial, the other called Express. Both pull up similar-looking wheels of useful commands and options, and each option can be swapped out for something else. The wheel is useful for accessing commonly needed actions, like Save or Tab, that might not quite warrant their own physical Express Key. When it appears onscreen, its circular interface hovers over whatever app you have open, taking up little space, with its options easily selectable. On its own, the Cintiq Pro 27 weighs a healthy 15.9 pounds, but that stat is not terribly useful—the stand, at 23.6 by 14.1 by 12.6 inches, weighs another 19.8 pounds, so the total weight of the system is nearly 36 pounds. Unless you have a VESA mount you plan to use instead of the stand, you’ll be adding some substantial weight to whatever flat surface you place this on.
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The Wacom Intuos Pro is a graphics tablet rather than a pen display, meaning you’ll need to hook it up to some kind of external display like a tablet or monitor. Once this is done – and the setup process is pretty intuitive and straightforward – you’ve got a highly effective drawing tablet on your hands, and one that comes at a great price. The Apple Pencil may seem hyper-futuristic as it charges via induction while it rests on the edge of an iPad display magnetically, but consider this: The Pro Pen 3 has no battery or cord, and it requires no charging at all. It uses Electromagnetic Resonance (EMR)—a technology Wacom developed in the 1980s—to work with the screen, as pen pressure and button presses are converted to electromagnetic waves. Furthermore, the Pro Pen 3 has a 10ms rated response time, versus the Apple Pencil’s 20ms. This, paired with a 120Hz refresh rate on the screen, equates to extremely low latency. The Pro Pen 3 has 8,192 pressure levels and supports 60 degrees of pen tilt angle.
The Wacom Cintiq Pro 27 is heavy, but no more bulky than a typical PC monitor. (Image credit: Future) The experience is the best I’ve tested to date. While retouching photos, it was super easy to get even single-pixel accuracy when zoomed in which is wildly impressive considering how shakey and inaccurate my coffee-fueled body tends to be. The Wacom Cintiq Pro 27 works out of the box with preloaded gestures for both your fingers and the included Wacom Pro Pen 3, and these will be familiar and feel intuitive to anyone used to working with other tablets such as an iPad.The cabinet has built-in cable management cinches, and some Velcro cable-management ties are also included. According to Wacom, the system ships with a USB-C-to-USB-C cable (5.9 feet), a USB-C-to-USB-A cable (5.9 feet), an HDMI cable (5.9 feet), and a mini DisplayPort-to-DisplayPort cable. (Our review unit came with only the cables necessary for the iMac we tested the display with.) The new big daddy of the Wacom range, announced in September 2022, the Cintiq Pro 27 boasts a majorly upgraded display – a true 10-bit 4K reference-quality unit, on par with a premium monitor. It’s the biggest tablet in the current family, with a 27-inch digital canvas, but despite this it actually has a smaller physical footprint than the previous Cintiq Pro 24, thanks to significantly slimmed bezels and a generally sleeker design.
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