Wife's birthday/mother's day is coming up, and she is a graphic designer and is always talking about upgrading her design equipment. She has a Wacom Intuos4 Large Graphics Tablet right now, which she got back in 2010.

I know nothing about this stuff. Should I get her an upgraded Wacom, or swap over to iPad Pro? I'm reading mixed reviews online and the comparison articles aren't helping much. I'd love for it to be a surprise, but pretty sure I may just have to hand her a check and tell her to buy the one she really wants.

5/2/2017 10:06:47 AM

does she use an apple computer? ipad pro + astro pad is pretty good and I really like the medium feedback of being able to look the same place I'm drawing. For this reason I went to a laptop with an active digitizer in the screen. the ipad pro + pencil are very fast and on par with the surface pro/surface book and other wacom based pc pen/digitizer combos.

5/2/2017 10:17:21 AM

Yep, she has an apple laptop.

I thought I read mediocre reviews of the apple pencil, has it improved since release?

5/2/2017 10:22:01 AM

I can't comment on its evolution, but it's been really good since I've used it

5/2/2017 1:06:48 PM

Might also want to look at Microsoft Surface. The pens are really good and they are pretty slick tabletops. My coworker who is a graphic designer really likes it for his design and artwork.

5/2/2017 2:29:14 PM

get her a surface studio

5/3/2017 3:57:04 PM

^The price is definitely sky high (unless you're used to paying mac prices), but laying it down flat to draw/write is choice. Processed a few photos in lightroom on one and immediately fell in love. Switching between a finger to "flick" or "choose" and the pen to do quick edits was nirvana...

5/3/2017 11:18:46 PM