Wacom Inkling

My love for Wacom has increased leaps and bounds today with the announcement of a pretty amazing product, Inkling.

Inkling features a beautiful design and 1024 levels of pressure, making it perfect device for anyone who sketches anything, from illustrators, graphic designers, to architects.

While there are other ink-to-digital pens out there, the difference here is Wacom’s pressure technology. Recording 1024 levels of pressure, the Inkling will capture ever nuance in your drawings.

I truly feel that every, and I mean every, design student should be required to use this as I’ve always felt that every designer needs to sketch their ideas on paper first. It’s much easier to visualize your ideas without the constraints of a computer, as the link between brain and hand has the path of least resistance. Put a mouse and a computer and you’ve already complicated it. With sketches, the only constraint is the two dimensional plane. Also, it’s easier to play with multiple ideas rather than spending a lot of time on one that might not be the best.

The only change I hope to come for this is the singular nib. If Wacom applied its choice of pen types for its Intuos and Cintiq tablets to the Inkling, they could easily provide a choice of applicators from Rotoring-style nibs to pencils to brush pens.

Wacom plans to start selling the Inkling worldwide in the next few weeks. In the US, it will be available in “mid-September” for a MSRP of $199.99 and includes a pen, receiver, rechargeable batteries, four spare pen ink cartridges, charging case and the Inkling Sketch Manager Application.

Erik