The short time I have had with my new toy has been fun and I have been
encouraged to keep trying to adapt to this new way of navigate, retouch
and draw the Wacom board is fun to use, it makes me feel like a pro.

And YES I certainly get a higher grade of control and precision for fiddly
retouching. And a nicer way to trace contours with the lasso tool, to get
better maskings in shorter time.

However to many years with the mouse in my hand have made me fall back
to this un ergonomic form of input device from time to time. And I still
prefer the mouse for surfing the web and clicking around in menus I hate
myself for that.

Pros (Pen boards in general, and in particular Wacom intuos 4M)

• Ergonomic way to work.
• Pressure sensitivity at almost analog levels (The No1 reason to get a pen board)
• Unequalized precision for critical image retouch and freehand drawing.
• Express buttons and touch ring can be configured to a grade that it
  makes the keyboard and mouse almost redundant.
• Built quality that feels luxury (except for the mouse).
• No batteries needed :0)
• Fun.
• Works just as fine in free open source apps like Gimp as in PS
  
  

Cons

• A bit expensive (Compared to a mouse)
• I wish I could have afforded the Wacom Cintiq 21UX .
• Learning curve will make it hard to appreciate the Wacom tablet fully
  at the beginning.
• Muse feels cheap and is un ergonomic (High precision thought).
• Not as portable as a mouse.
• New board is incompatible with pens from earlier versions.
  
  

Some final words

Don't fall in to the bigger is better thinking.
The M sized board is more than enough for my work on a
20" 1600x1200px screen and I bet I will find it to be more
than sufficient on a larger and higher resolution screen too.

If possible go to a store and try some different sizes to find
out if it suit your needs.
If you don't have a store with demo boards, buy online from
Amazon and try it at home before you decide.

And maybe you should opt for one of the cheaper bambu
tablets first to find out if this is your cup of tea.

Just remember that a Intuos board is the one that
you actually want and probably soner or later will get anyway.

And as usual some useful links :0)

• Modersheppet.se has some useful buyers advice about sizes etc.
• Photoshopcafe.com has also reviwed the Wacom Intuos 4
• photoshopsupport.com
• creativepro.com
• layersmagazine.com
• Wacom Intuos4 @ amazon.com
• Thrusted reviews

Checkout the next page for an overview of Wacom Accessories and the full tech specs of the M size board in this review.