Wacom Cintiq Pro 27 Review 

can't wait to get it in 2037

The problem with the price isn't wacom charging for a raft of shiny features, it's how much they're charging for them. A 27" gaming monitor with 99% Adobe RGB gamut zip zop zooie and 120 hz will run you $400 at the very high end these days. The wacom pen/touch features (which comes included with the bigger Samsung phones and tablets) doesn't feel like it justifies a 1000% price hike. I think a lot of people saw this price and are waiting for a Huion or XPPen or Xenselabs or someone to roll up with a feature matching product that will cost literally half of this if not less.

The most impressive thing about this 27" is that the overall dimension is actually smaller than the 24". I hope they will release a new 24" and make the bezel smaller and a tougher kick stand.

It's not for me nor or the average person, but it's cool to see something this advanced for the art industry/professionals. (Since they're the ones that will make the most use of all the color profiles and specs etc) Usually, yeah, it's easy to complain about the price especially if it's meant for the general audience (I'm looking at you Cintiq 22 non-Pro) but this is definitely not one of them. This model have a specific target audience and most of us are definitely not one of them: that's my main takeaway from this. Would be cool if this pushes forward to more 27-inch at different price points eventually though, Wacom or not. Edit: Okay, now that I have seen the whole video, the lack of a built-in kickstand is definitely a bad idea especially for a 500$ stand that's sold separately, oof.

Hey Brad! Back here at the bottom of the comment section. If you want to save some time on line drawing buildings there is an option in blender called freestyle that you can use to render lines over sharp edges. To get just the black and white rendering be sure to assign a white material with a white emissions shader. For faster results I would suggest using eevee as the render engine since the render will be effectively shadless.

One element you might be missing was the fact that it was really built for harmony. Which as an animation major I’m actually really excited for. Although we’ll see if it fits in my budget

It looks HELLA nice! But I wish manufactures would focus on making better pro tablets in the 14-18" range. I would loooove this in a 16" model.

Brad I wish you would have recorded the fan noise to give us an idea how loud that fan is. Overall good review thanks!

Since starting digital art I feel bigger is not always better, however I really would love to get my hand on this. Thanks for your review, this is going straight to top of wishlist :)

I really wish they had all the buttons on one side instead of the weird pistol grips on each side. You end up only having half the buttons available to you (because one hand always has a pen in hand!). It would have been better if you could just rotate the screen so you can have it left or right handed. Also, I heard there's going to be a firmware update to allow older Pro cintiq's to use the new pro pen 3.

I love that customisable pen. To compensate for the lack of dedicated eraser, they ought to include a separate eraser tool .

Love the idea of those grips on the back! I will typically be holding the display with one hand while I draw with the other so that could be cool for shortcuts. Also… massive!

the editing is just getting better!!! and i love that!

This thing is kind of like a luxury car or an expensive pair of shoes. You don't necessarily need it because there are more practical alternatives. But for others there's just enough here to justify it as both a luxury buy that also has a lot of very nice quality features. I bought this thing day one and sold my 24 (I had a monitor arm before so didn't need to buy a stand) and I've been enjoying it a lot. I hope to see the new display technology trickle down to Wacom's lower entry products so everybody can experience it.

I think the way for non-graphic/fashion industry professionals to view this tablet is sorta like those concept cars that manufacturers create, all the bells and whistles in them slowly trickle down into the ordinary Joe 'consumer' version. So, for us, this is like a glimpse into the near future! :)

For $3500, they should have made it a 5k at 27 inches. I can buy a brand new Mac with 5k display and use a drawing tablet for that money. I have the Cintiq 24 pro and usually just use a Cintiq drawing tablet coupled with my 5k mac. Yes, the image quality is that different. That means this is much worse, since they kept the 4k and made the screen bigger. No thank you.

The solution to the shoelace effect is to turn off smoothing in the brush options. You have to uncheck it in the brush settings. Setting it to zero will not work.

This is almost perfect, although yeah, the price is expensive, but it's for professional... While the stand is not included, it's probably a good thing as some might prefer ergo arm instead. Wish they gone further with the display, such as having mini LED at least. Thanks for the review!

I’m planning on purchasing this as my first personal Drawing tablet combine with the new RTX 4090. I’ve used Pen displays as well as generic pads but as a gamer and someone who wants to animate, draw, and do 3D design, the 4K 120hz really sold me. Not only that but the thinner bezels are something I’ve always been drawn to on screens. I’m definitely getting this. It’s something you would not need to replace pretty much at all.

Almost perfect, just needed a better display (mini LED, OLED, something with a decent contrast ratio). Thank you for reviewing!

I own a design business so its a no-brainer that I can write off. I use the best thing out there and so I don't love how expensive it is but also this is what I spend the majority of my life doing so it makes sense for me. I never found a solution for the color accuracy issues of the previous 27" Cintiq. The color calibrator that came with it did not work. It sounds like this one has figured out that problem. Thanks for the review!

Fan noise is my biggest issue with cintiq vs iPad. Very sad they didn't improve that. I'll wait to upgrade until they match the iPad quality.

I just want a 22-24” Regular Cintiq 1440p tablet. Still rocking my 22HD Touch, even though I barely use the touch feature, but this bulk is starting to get to me. I also want to try their newer pens. I know Huion has good 1440p options but I really wish they had a slim / 3D pen like Wacom does.

If the pen is not backward compatible. I speculate that a new Intuos Pro series is coming.

say wathever you want, 3,849.99 € it is not justified for the specs of the product, period.

I've actually tortured myself regarding purchasing one to review. I already have a Pro 24. I think you called it right, the 120hz isnt a gimmick, its just not a game changer which I expected due to exactly what you said (plus just the way EMR works). People saying this will make it feel like and iPad dont get that iPad is much smaller and uses a totally different pen tech. I can say from a design point of view, I found myself completly disagreeing with their design choices for the first time I ever. The expresskey remote is great, plus you can use more than one. It had like 17 buttons, now you have 4. I dont like the smaller bezel. That was always on the plus side of a Wacom and the removal of the eraser is puzzling. Imagine if they added a third button but kept the eraser? The eraser is like a Wacom thing. Thanks for the review. I don't think the jump is big enough to call it the next gen. I think its sort of an intermediate jump.

Amazing review - and this is the upgrade I’ve been waiting for! (Still rocking the 27QHD) - btw, I wanted to reach out to you but it looks like you misspelled your link (you wrote shool instead of school in the URL). Another huge thank you Brad - I couldn’t cope without you :)

The price is nowhere near representative of what this costs to make. A pen display is barely an added cost over a.... display. The only real difference is the electrostatic matrix (that's like 2 grids with magnetic sensors) for the input and that's about it, the rest is software. This is actually piss easy barebone technology that costs almost nothing to implement in a screen. All this great value (color correction, HDR, 4k blah blah blah) on a 27" display would amount to maybe 1k. The tablet is more than 3.5 times that. Wacom is coasting on their brand and launching their price into LEO. If they were pricing this product honestly this would be 1700 bucks. And they would make 600-700$ easy on it.

For the unwanted touch, I use a glove with a thicker side. Plus the cushiony side makes for comfier drawing sessions.

😏Every Vet Artist knows if they need a Wacom or not: The Wacom 27” seems like a great home monitor it’s not portable; or the best choice if you are a hobbyist. Real Artist will find a way to make a [edit:] Mona Lisa with finger paint.

I've just finished getting this set up and had a quick test. I've quite a few gripes with it unfortunately. The lack of built in legs wasn't an issue as I had my Cintiq Pro 24 set up on an Ergotron arm but for the money you're right, those should he expected to be there. Set up gripes they have cut about 1m off all their cables. Kettle Lead is now 1m instead of 1.8m and then all PC connective cables have gone from 3m to 1.8m. So before I even started I had to go out and buy extenders and other cables to reach for my set up very baffling given the price increase and inclusion of VESA mount they should know we'll still need the cable length! The fan issues...... I actually think it's a couple of DB louder than the Pro 24 fans on low profile. However what I've noticed is they don't seem to ram up and down like the Pro24 so it is easier to block out. Still no idea WHY they insist on fans in it. My Pro24 had to go for RMA because the fan inside started rattling loudly! As for the Photoshop issue that's an issue been known since the dawn of time. The only fix I've found for it is to use a 3rd party plugin called Lazy Nezumi.

its time for huion and xp pen to make alternative of this with lot cheaper price and smaller display

GREAT, thorough review! Thank for taking the time - and, wow, solid content in both of your channels! 🇺🇸

they finally fixed the mile wide bezel! any pen lag anyone has from using displays in my opinion is from an under powered computer. my laptop has pen lag, my desktop pc has none.

Oh man, this thing is tempting. I am currently using the the Cintiq Pro 32 but this thing looks very nice.

I bought the Huion 24 4K a few months back and love it. If the Wacom was available back then for 1500€ less I would’ve considered it, but 3500€? My main “Gaming” and Reference display has 99% AdobeRGB, HDR, 170hz and is 32 inches for: 700€ new and I got it for 250… So now I got a Tablet with good color and a reference monitor for a combined sum of 1650€. Only thing missing is the touchscreen. Wacom, I love you, this product seems amazing. But for 99% of people this thing is unobtainable. I just don’t get the “it’s for pros” argument. Why not make stuff Pros use affordable for the masses? There’s no harm in that, if anything it would probably boost sales..

You should give Rebelle 5 from Escape Motions a go. It has very little lag and isn't based on ancient code like Photoshop or Clip Studio. It also has a ton of innovative features that makes it stand out. I commented this on another video earlier, but it just keeps getting deleted, so one last try... I really believe they deserve the support, and the software is now on sale for ten bucks.

Can't believe the fan noise is still a problem on these pro tablets. Ridiculous

I think this one more effective for 3D model n animation project.

Too rich for moi… Still don’t understand why they didn’t came up with a full 5K display for this price…

Waiting for Xp Pen to launch a new generation of 24" pro displays with a 16k pressure sensitive pen. The 14" 2d Gen model blew me away. The pen is fantastic!

You should give illustrator a try. Todd Mcfarlane uses it to do his art. It's built similarly to flash where the art is vectorized instead of rasterized like photoshop. Vector art doesn't lose detail when you zoom in. You probably know this though. Graphic designers use it most.

12" is enuff. But I bet that could be cool 9:23 These emr pens use different frequencies. They cannot work on a tablet not designed for the pen in question.

Feels like Wacom is dropping the lower end of their business and leaving it to huion/XP pen and focusing soley on the high end of pen display. They're officially the apple of pen display haha. I really wanted to get a Wacom 13 pro but as far as I know, it seems like they've done away with that model entirely. Perhaps because they've seen what huion is offering and realized they can't compete at that price point, features wise. On an unrelated note, I hope xencelabs develops their own pen display, would be cool to see how it stands out from the competition. Currently looking at their medium pen tablet or the huion 2.5 k 13 pro

Fantastic review, Brad. Thank you. The weird choice to get rid of the remote and leave us practically with only 4 shortcut keys is a deal killer for me, unfortunately. I was stoked to buy one until I learned that.

Watching the way you interact with the screen real estate (4:58) is EXACTLY why I stick with the iPad. Especially when you had to draw that longer roof line then zoomed out to continue to draw from the wrist and not the arm/elbow. I had a 21UX back in the day and noticed the wear mark was only about a 6" diameter right in the center of the screen.

Brad, the new ipad 10th gen is here

Windows Apple and Wacom need to team up and make the best drawing tablet for us artists. No more stacking tablets on top of each other.

The NewLine Flex Monitor 27" is also an interesting alternative 🤔

I was ready to pull the trigger on this. I already own a Cintiq Pro 24 and opted out of buying the 32 due to its size. I’d already owned a 27 QHD and found that to be perfect for my use case, but sadly they didn’t launch a newer 27” version and I went with the 24 instead. I was excited and watched all of the prerelease reveals, and in one of those I saw this was mounted to a Wacom Flex Arm. I already own the Flex Arm and it appeared the 27 just used a different adapter and would plug right into my current Flex Arm. Unfortunately I’ve seen almost nothing about this adapter or anywhere to buy an equivalent adapter that would work with the Pro 27. It’s a shame because I was so ready to pull the trigger, but due to my setup the Flex Arm is mandatory. Granted it will work with any Ergotron style arm, but I already own several of those and even the HX doesn’t come close to the usability and seemingly refined functionality of the Flex Arm. I don’t want to give up those features. So despite being pumped about this release and completely ready to buy, Wacom being Wacom hasn’t mentioned this adapter or made it clear if it will ever get released. As a professional artist and designer that uses these devices for a living, the price doesn’t bother me. These are the tools I use to generate my income. I understand why this is frustrating for hobbyists and part time artists that can’t justify the cost. But for professionals, much like the cost of a high-end MacBook Pro, the price isn’t really a factor. But, and this is a big but, I take issue with Wacom’s seeming inability to communicate with their customers and provide solutions for the very basic needs of those customers. A missing stand, fine. Vesa mount options, great. Release a video of a flex arm adapter that is going to be the solution thousands of current Pro 24 and 32 users are going to want to use, but fail to launch it alongside the tablet or even release any info on it, not great. So here I am, ready to drop the $3500 on this product but not being able to justify it. Not because of the cost but due to usability.

Ok but it costs as much as a op of the line pc, there’s no way I could justify buying something like this, it’s mad!

I personally have tried going back to 60 hz multiple times to save money but uits completely impossible to me - anything less than 120 hz just... isn't worth it for me. Something like this would be a step towards that 'every-monitor' that I've been looking for. If I could game AND draw on this, it would be perfect for me. Running multiple monitors never seems to work for me, and the price of this thing is too damn high. I hope this marks a step in the right direction for companies like Huion to make a 120 hz monitor though.

Just thought I would drop a note that goes grossly under-sung about the most current Cintiq Pros; Most people don't know you can connect two machines (one through USBC and the other through HDMI/DP) and toggle between them through the OSD "Input Source" I use it connected on a standard $150 Ergotron arm, to a M1 Mac Studio Max and an off the hook Windows system for 3d and color work. The hardware LUTs and color capabilities makes video editing and post a dream as well.

0:57 “and this fabric is… a cape?!” 😂😂

I realy wish there was some place where you could test all these different systems before commiting to one. Atm as a student I'm drawing on a HP envy with a glossy screen and I am NOT liking it but it gets me trought product design school...

Wacom really needs to start innovating, this new flagship model is a bit of disappointment considering it probably won't be replaced for 5 years. The only real upgrade of note is the higher refresh rate.

I hope Wacom makes Intuos Pros that use the Pro Pen 3.

Man, your English is so easy to understand. Tks for that.

Price is great for this Cintiq if you consider it as a professional gear. Just a few years ago, pantone validated DCI-P3 displays were hard to find under $10,000 range until Apple released XDR monitor. Even now, high end Eizo displays are easily above $10,000. That said, those are professional studio monitors and their qualities are much higher than Cintiq Pro 27. But, cintiq does come with Pen displays that the studio displays don't have and has a decent-ish display. I don't know if this should qualify as professional tool, with Wacom level of quality control, but this isn't a regular consumer product either. Therefore, I think the middle ground price does make sense. If you're an professional illustrator, the price can even be considered great. People who complain price on this are the people who probably never even heard of Eizo displays or even is interested in professional gears. Wrong demographic.

You mentioned that Windows drawing is always gonna feel laggier than tablets, but I don't really agree with that. I found the Tab S7 noticeably worse than my Surface Pro 4 or desktop with the cintiq 16 in regards to lag. The ipad is absolutely better, but to ascribe its latency to all tablets is misleading at best

The 24" cintiq numerous users reported that the touch feature disable function was not working. It was one aspect that stopped me from buying it.

Laughable price compared to a Huion top of the line tablet. If it fails, you could buy another one and you're still up 900USD. Sure, it's only 24 inch, but the drawing difference between 24 and 27 is much-much smaller than between 16 and 24. If you have tons of money to spend, you could buy this, but otherwise....

Wacom let me try this and I had a blast. But it's too big for me coming from a Cintiq 16 user. I love the 3 buttons and the customization of the new pen. I'm waiting for them to release 24".

Dude ipad 2022 line is hereeeeee We need reviews and compilations!!!!!!

Stop suffering with the different stands already! Get yourself a vesa arm, free up your desk, don't make your neck hurt, and move your tablet however you want. There are a lot of different ones, you can google it. I got myself an NB F100A because of the fact that you can twist it in all directions. Display Tablets bigger than 16" in principle should always only be on vesa arm

Just snagged a XP-Pen Artist 24 Pro few days ago for $645 with mfg 1 yr an additional ext 2yrs warranty. Too good of a deal to past up. Maybe down the line as I progress I can say/justify for the cost for a Wacom 24 pro. What really sold me too was Xpens' support service vs Wacoms' support based on what I have read currently. 😎🍻✌🏽

Even with all its bells and whistles, the Wacom cintiq pro 27 is just too expensive. Thank you for reviewing it but alas I must find a different more affordable option.

For me the same issues never really get solved and I think it might just be that the tech has found its limits. Parallax, Lag, and screen rainbow texture. The iPad is honestly the superior tech, but the limiting size discounts it. I also don't understand the fans. The iMac is a 27" 4K display and you never hear those fans. I dunno... I've gotten somewhat used to my 24" but the lag still drives me nuts.

Thanks for the review! I guess we all needed to be brought down to earth after seeing all the insane previews for this thing. I hope you get your Surface Pro 9 review out sooner than later I know it just got revealed, I'm just saying best of luck to you ;)

I had a Dell 27 inch Canvas once - based on a Wacom 27 inch. Beautiful screen to draw on and although it wasn't 4K or 8K - it was still an amazing experience. Sadly, I had to sell it as I didn't have dedicated studio space big enough to fit and my family needs were more important at the time. It's not the price that will get you - it's lack of space you have in your home but the way Wacom has shrunk the bezels to make it similar size to a 24" screen is really promising. I could look at one of these again....

Make your own stand, wood or other materials are not hard to come by if you can figure out what the ideal angle is.

Those feature in 20-24" one and I'm sold

The big question is whether this is the max size for a Wacom Cintiq from now on, or do they have something even bigger up their sleeve? The Cintiqs have gotten so good it´s difficult to imagine Wacom coming up with something really new, other than an even larger screen. However, the older 32 pro was already very large and unwielding. Wacom may have increasingly problems to defend their ground against convertibles, tablets and much cheaper products from Huion and others.

500 dollars for the stand ?🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

The stand price is a complete scam. There is No. Way.That stand is worth $500. That's insane. They've been taking notes from Apple lol.

The size makes it tempting for someone who loves the idea of Microsoft's Surface Studio but find's it grossly underpowered for the price. I wish Microsoft would make a standalone Studio display. Hopefully large format touch displays become more common place and drop in price.

Very interesting to see they’ve dropped the remote. Mine (prev cintiq ) stopped working very quickly, crippling my work flow….took a while to get used to keystrokes again. I contacted Wacom. Could I prove purchase. Could I plug my cintiq into a spare computer…. If I didn’t have one find a friend… a whole list of things, no help, and if I didn’t do what they said they wouldn’t help further. Then I stumbled on an internal memo that had been released…. Seems I wasn’t the only one and there could be interference coming from wifi routers. I turned mine off but it still didn’t fix it. I do wonder if the remote for the company was more hassle than it was worth in terms of complaints and I’m glad buttons are back. The less there is to go wrong, the better.

I had very high expectations seeing it was a 120hz display, hoping that it would drastically reduce the lag of the stroke. What a disappointment it is instead!!! I was ready to drop the 5k it costs in Japan, but no way I’ll do that after watching the review. Also it is unbelievable they still cannot calibrate their driver to make touch gestures more responsive.

Thanks for the review. Just to let you know, since 46-2 driver (Mac), support for higher-end Macs with at least two external, hi-res displays fail to work with the Cintiq (or other Intuos tablets). The display works BUT pen gets lost on one of the other displays (and in one configuration on the left edge of one of the displays). You may only have one display with a Cintiq but for those of us with multiple displays, this is a real problem. Wacom is working on it (I think) but this may force me to Craigslist my Cintiqs.

I finally decided to buy the Cintiq 27 pro vs 24 pro, but the 27 pro out of stock everywhere even in wacom center in my country, and only available by order only, AKA they don't intent to stock it, because probably in here super unpopular, in online shop in here, I only see 1 review someone who buy it, probably not popular at all because of the price

Funny thing is "fan noise" has been an issue with every Cintiq product I have ever owned or used. My trusty old 24HD is probably the worst of them, but all of them have made an annoying sound once powered on.. and I think the later "Touch" model had a fan control option, due to the noise issue, esp in quiet environments I really wish Wacom would find a better supplier for their internal fans... most of them have a whine or produce an inconsistent & hollow, plastic-y sound that I don't think I've ever had to deal with one any other devices.

Fantastic as always, I enjoy your vision on things (I mean you just reflect a tool and the impact on your workflow)

If the pen lagging like that, there's no point. With price that high, at least the the line should appears right under the pen tip when drawing stroke. Pen delay is the biggest pet peeve and deal breaker for digital drawing gadget, at least to me personally

Wacom is little "evil" for not even having small feet on this. And paying extra for a stand. Worse than Apple pencil that you have to buy extra for your iPad.

Seems like a lot of people are really trying hard NOT to like the Pro27. No stand is a PLUS!!! I don't have a HUGE box with a stand in it that I have to store in the garage for years! There ARE 8 useable buttons. You can EASILY use the buttons with the pen in your hand. Sure you put the most often used on the no pen hand side. Its WAY Lighter then the 24 old 27 because you don't have that TANK of a VESA adapter on it. You CAN still access the buttons with the side tray on. But MOST ppl who put the tray on are doing it so they can use the remote so they aren't going to use the buttons so why are they complaining...? Fan noise is fine for it's intended purpose.

Nice Review! Sadly Wacom's support is one of the worst out there. They dropped macOS hardware calibration support for the Cintiq 27QHD only 3 years after it was released. Even if you bought their Colour Manager. :D All Wacom products I had in the last 10 years were simply not good. Had different Cintiqs with color shift or dead pixels or dust, even noisy fans. Intros Pro running down the nibs hella fast... Support was aware of that so they gave you a hard sheet replacement for free. But yeah, be aware that Wacom doesn't care about customers and they are greedy and overpriced.

i want one. i don't need one, and i can't afford one, but i want one. I do feel like the lack of giant borders around the screen kind of make it look like much cheaper alternatives. Still, it's lovely.

I bought my daughter one and I loved it and bought one too. Not sure what all the negativity is about

I hate fan noise... for 4000$ they should have solved this issue... I'm disappointed...

If you use a “one cable only” USB-C connection with a MacBook Pro-as seems to be the case here-you only get 60Hz refresh rate.

IS IT NOISY??

They are pushing the boundaries... of cost to value ratios. My computer costs less, and can run Cyberpunk, blender, and any drawing app, smoothly... Oh, and that's less expensive *including* a 24in color-accurate monitor, m&k, an iPad air w/ an apple pencil, AND a 13 in Huion pen display lol This video could easily be called "Only watch this video if you already make over 80k a year off of digital art". Diminishing returns strike again, and I'm glad you're also struggling to validate this substantial cost.

•Nvidia is the Apple of GPUs. But not as bad as Apple. •Cintiq is the Apple of Drawing Tablets. But not as bad as Apple, although very close. •EA is the Apple of Game Companies. But actually kinda worse than Apple. Or even. Anymore ideas? P.S. Intel…🤔

that pen looks like a genuine improvement especially if you like the actual much slimmer classic pen

The only thing about this pen display that I REALLY care about is the refresh rate. 120Hz compared to 60Hz makes a huge difference. My Cintiq Pro 24 has 4K and a very low parallax so that's already covered. But if I somehow could upgrade it to 120Hz I definitely would.

It would be great if Wacom would come out with a new version of the Cintiq pro 32 or make it bigger like 37-inch but still the same size as the 32-inch

I wanted to buy this but the Tax prices to ship to my country are too high almost $1800 extra without a stand included, of course, add a stand, and the price increases. I wish Wacom could ship to India as well :(

I got a Cintiq Pro 24 + Ergo Stand for $1000 used so I’ll be waiting until this model gets older and used products start being sold

Thanks!

I just want a cheaper laminated 22 inch one, make it 1080p idc 😭