Today I’ll be reviewing the 11.6-inch Wacom One 12, a compact, affordable pen display with essential features you need to make digital art.
It is designed for digital artists, hobbyists and students who really want to draw directly onto a screen, but don’t have a whole lot of money to invest in the professional-level devices.
Coming from a Wacom Intuos Small, the ability to draw on screen is amazing! It speeds up the drawing/ painting process by a lot when you can see where your lines are going.
I hope you enjoy my hands-on review and thoughts. Please feel free to comment or reach out directly with any questions you have.
Unboxing
Out of the box, the Wacom One 12 arrives with its stylus, 2 usb-c cables, power adapters, 3 spare Pen nibs and a nib remover .
Like some of its competitors, it would have been nice to see Wacom throw in a few accessories, such as tablet stand, a pen case or stand, etc.
Design
The Wacom One 12 has a simple, slim design which is compact and great for portability.
The body of the tablet is largely a sturdy plastic covering the back and sides, and glass on the front.
Then on one end will be your two USB-C ports, while on the other are the buttons for power, display settings, and a switch for toggling touch input.
Along the top you’ll find a fabric hoop to slide your pen into. There are no pull-out legs at the back.
Portability
Coming in at just 11.8 x 7.5 x 0.1 inches and weigts 1.54 pounds, the Wacom One 12 is a surprisingly portable pen display.
It can slip into most laptop bags with ease and be readily available whenever the creative urge strikes.
Display
The 11.6-inch IPS LCD screen is high definition at 1920 x 1080p, with a brightness of 275 nits, covering an average 99% sRGB color gamut. The image is sharp and the colors are vibrant, perfect for doodling.
The glass is fully laminated to the panel beneath, eliminating any gap between the two and mostly Minimize the parallax that ensures your cursor aligns perfectly with your pen tip.
The glass surface is matte and etched, reducing unwanted glare and providing the exact amount of resistance to your stylus.
Stylus Pen
Bundled along with the Wacom One 12 display is a slim, lightweight Wacom pen which shares the white and black color pattern.
The top half of the pen is black, and the part of the stylus you actually hold is white and lightly textured with a firm grip.
There are two shortcut buttons along the side which are fully customizable to assign keyboard keys, modifiers, mouse clicks, or preset functions.
The stylus is cordless and battery free, uses EMR technology. This means you won’t ever have to buy batteries or watch their charge just to sketch.
It offers 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity for natural line variation. Pen Tilt is also support for nuanced shading effects.
Compatibility
The tablet works with Mac, Windows PC and Chromebook, as well as select mobile android devices.
Connectivity
A Single USB-C to USB-C cable is included in the box with the Wacom One 12 that allows you to connect it to your computer to work.
There are two USB-C ports on the tablet and you can use either one if you only need a single cable.
It definitely makes a difference only relying on a single cable for connection, perfect for moving between locations without a power supply.
If your computer doesn’t have a type-c display port, you need to buy a 3-in-1 cable (HDMI, USB-A, and power) separately – not included.
Set UP
Once connected to a computer, installing the driver is as simple as navigating to Wacom’s support website and selecting the model of your display unit.
Once installed, you’ll have two new applications on your system: Wacom Center and Wacom Tablet Properties.
The Wacom Center is a sort of hub where you can access some settings but also find resources to get you started and comfortable with your new device.
In the Wacom Tablet Properties application, you’ll be able to adjust a range of settings on the Wacom One 12.
This includes things like what your pen buttons do, and the display settings like the brightness, colour mode, etc.
When it comes to pen pressure, you only get a tip feel slider and not a full pressure curve.
Bouns Software
When purchasing a Wacom One, you also get more than just a digital art tablet – you gain access to bonus downloadable software and online training, as well as the Wacom Adventure program which offers resources and content to improve your skills.
The Wacom One 12 comes with a range of free-trial software including Clip Studio Paint, Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, Affinity Publisher, Bluescape, Limnu, Collaboard, and Pear Deck. These pieces of software are great for editing, drawing, signing documents, and collaborating.
Drawing Experience
Wacom one 12 pen display works well with all my favorite art programs, including Adobe Photoshop CC, illustrator CC, Clip Studio Paint, and Krita.
I was a bit concerned at first that the drawing area might be too small, what with two/three inches of screen space being taken up by menus and toolbars, but this is okay!
As far as color reproduction and Clarity goes, it’s fairly solid. It has a nice feel with enough resistance on surface to feel like paper.
I didn’t experience any issues with glare. On the weaker side, the brightness is adequate for indoor use, but not bright enough for outdoor use.
The lack of dials and express keys does slow you down a little bit, although you can set ups an onscreen menu and the wacom express Key remote is available as a separate purchase.
Drawing is the same buttery smooth experience as every other Wacom product I’ve used. It was fast and responsive.
Although not the higher 8K or 16K levels of pressure sensitivity, The 4,096 pressure levels ensure smooth lines and realistic line width and tilt variation.
The line quality is great, it’s very smooth, there’s no significant line jitter. Even if I’m doing diagonal lines, there’s virtually no parallax or offset to the cursor.
While its not quite as nice to use as a Wacom Cintiq, it still feels better than the other options out there including the XPPen Artist 12 3rd gen, Veikk VK1200 V2 and ugee UE12.
In Conclusion
If your dream is to draw, design and animate on a screen, but don’t want to spend more than $250 this would be a great entry to a digital painting experience.
I haven’t regretted making the leap, neither will you. Though it is smaller and of course cheaper than other models, Wacom have not cut corners with quality.
It is a compact, affordable and efficient drawing tablet. With a wide range of software and resources, the Wacom One 12 is a great tablet to supercharge your skills.
If you can afford and can accommodate bigger, I would recommend getting a bigger one – 13.3-inch Wacom One Touch 13 or 14-inch Wacom One 14.
I hope this was helpful to some of you.
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