Wacom typically never disappoints and this year was no different. The mainstay models such as the Intuos4 and the recently face-lifted family of Bamboo tablets were shown but much of their floor was centered on the professional grade Cintiq design tablets, all of which feature an LCD workspace that is essentially doubles as a digital drawing board. The Cintiq 24HD was mainly on display and looked to be the best of the best as far as graphic tablets go with a ginormous 24” area, a generous resolution of 1920x1200, and performance that feels natural and smooth in the right hands. And it packs a price to match those inches, as all except the most gifted and career-focused designers probably won’t be able to afford this wondrous $2,499 device.

 We finally got the opportunity to sit down and play with the Inkling which has notoriously been hard to get a preorder on even before the holiday season began.

For the artists who thrive on quickly bringing their concepts to life this stylus/pen hybrid utilizes standard replaceable ink cartridges, an IR receiver, and ultrasonic tech that memorizes stroke and sketches and converts them into either .JPG/.PNG/.BMP/.PDF formats for quick editing in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. What we took away from the Inkling is that it won’t replace your Intuos anytime soon, but should streamline the busy work associated with clean-up.