I have a love/hate relationship with input devices. I want them to be just flexible and fade into the background. Because I use a lot of different apps (Flame, Nuke, 3D apps, etc.) I constantly have to deal with complex view port navigation, middle mouse click/drag, right mouse click, etc.
I may just have a new favorite…
I’ve been using Wacom forever, as well as Kensington trackballs. But they always struggle when it comes to supporting both middle click drag, right click, and more in an ergonomic way.
After I saw a colleague try out a Xencelab tablet - the first real alternative to Wacom, I wanted to try it and just received my medium bundle. First impressions are very upbeat (hence the post).
Medium tablet side is good even with large screens. Comes with two pens - a thin 2 button, and traditional 3 button pen. On the three button pen, the buttons are separate, arranged in a line, and have positive click feedback. No more guessing or rocking the Wacom pen. And with 3 buttons, you can accommodate multiple mouse click setups.
Better yet it comes with a satellite button unit, which has a dial and 8 buttons, similar to the Wacom. My problem with the Wacom is that, I always keep to the right of the keyboard, so the buttons and dial become unusable as modifiers. With the Xencelab table, I can keep the tablet to the right of my keyboard and the button unit to the left. So now I can push a button for middle mouse click drag with my left hand, and the pen is just position and motion, which is more precise and takes less thinking.
And price is good too. On the BlackFriday discount it was $247 for all of that.
Drawing Tablets for Creatives | Xencelabs
Will need some more mileage to see how it holds up. Tried it in Flame, and seems to be compatible by all accounts.
Anyone else using these? I search the forum and saw one post mentioning it in passing.
