Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I am a professional designer, illustrator, and photo retoucher, having worked in NYC and other international markets (there are projects I’ve worked on you would likely recognize). I own two WACOM tablets—older models, with the latest Mac OS update, drivers for my WACOM models were no longer maintained. They were perfectly functional until a dozen weeks ago when an overdue OS update effectively broke them forever, and I was forced to shop for a new tablet. I (foolishly) thought I could save some money, and go with a lower-cost GAOMON device (to extreme regret). It’s a shame, the GAOMON hardware itself looks and feels pretty solid, but the software driver / preferences are third-rate at best. Compared to a competitor like WACOM, the user has very little control over anything in the GAOMON’s bare-bones minimum device preferences software. LET ME EXPLAIN HOW THIS EFFECTS PERFORMANCE. AS OTHERS HAVE NOTED, the “mouse mode” is effectively non-functional. I have a 36” monitor. Tracking pixel to position gives very little precision with a monitor of this size. For professional users, doing design work on a large monitor, Mouse Mode is absolutely essential. TO EXPLAIN: In regular mode, X/Y on the tablet corresponds to X/Y on the screen. Drop your stylus 1/3 from the left edge and 1/4 from the top of the tablet, and the cursor will fall to a corresponding 1/3 from the left edge and 1/4 from the top of the screen (predictably). This is all very reasonable for a small monitor or a laptop screen, HOWEVER… However, given the modest size of the tablet, if one is a professional designer using a large format screen, moving from X/Y on the tablet to the corresponding X/Y on screen is a MASSIVE difference in scale: moving two or three millimeters on the tablet will send the cursor flying two or three centimeters or more across the screen—in regular mode—therefore the stylus is afforded little If any precision. This is where “Mouse Mode” comes in… If one is using a large scale monitor, Mouse Mode functions—as the name implies—much like a mouse: it let’s the user lift the stylus up off the table—as cursor remains stationary on screen—move the stylus over, and drop it back to the tablet surface again (much like lifting a mouse off of a table surface, and dropping it again), continuing on with the cursor at the screen coordinate where it was previously left (i.e.: tracking the cursor from the relative position of where the stylus is, not the absolute X/Y position of the tablet corresponding to the screen). This mode—IN THEORY—should allow a modest size tablet to move with a high level of granular precision across a much larger monitor, HOWEVER… However two exceptional shortcomings—one explicitly software, and the other maybe software or hardware—render this GAOMON tablet effectively useless in Mouse Mode. I will explain each of the two here: 1. Some reviews have stated that Mouse Mode doesn’t work at all, for all practical purposes it does not. The stylus is extremely STICKY: what I mean by this is, it’s frustratingly difficult to make the tablet release the cursor when lifting the stylus. By comparison: on a WACOM tablet, I can lift the stylus 2 to 3 MILLIMETERS off the tablet, and the screen cursor DOES NOT STICK to the stylus: it easily releases the cursor from tracking against the stylus just as if I’ve lifted a pencil from a piece of paper, so to speak, HOWEVER… However on the GAOMON table, one must lift the stylus a full 4 to 5 CENTIMETERS above the surface of the tablet to make the cursor “let go” of the stylus (it’s STICKY AF). Comparatively, with a WACOM’s delicate precision I can casually lift my finger-tip raising the stylus mere millimeters and with a flick of the wrist drop the cursor back down. The second the stylus disengages from the surface of the tablet, the cursor is released. With the GAOMON tablet I must literally lift my wrist, and entire forearm up off of my desk into the air, only then does the tablet “release the cursor” and allow me to drop the stylus back on to the tablet. From an ergonomic standpoint this is not feasible. Mouse Mode is in any practical sense, completely unusable. IF ONLY there were a way to adjust this, alas… 2. The preferences settings in the GAOMON driver are also effectively worthless, giving the user control over virtually nothing beyond button controls. The preference settings within the driver software are focused almost entirely on the functions the user can assign to the quick key buttons on the tablet. On a WACOM tablet, the driver gives the user an astounding level of granular control over sensitivity of the stylus in every conceivable variable—WACOM is a professional grade product, made for professional power users. Then there’s the absolutely maddening cursor-to-stylus “stickiness” thing I wrote about above (yes, I’m going to keep flogging this dead horse). This is where I’m unsure if it’s a software matter or a hardware matter. Perhaps if the driver software were more professional, the sensitivity of the tablet to stylus stickiness could be adjustable… or it may actually be a limitation of the sensor used in their hardware—I do not know the answer to that. I tried to “give it a week or two” and see if I could grow to accept the GAOMON tablet’s limitations. In doing so I missed the 30 day window to return the device. It was then pushed aside as I switched to using an old mouse, if temporarily. I have since gotten the GAOMON tablet “out of the way” on my desk, and it now sits on the floor, leaning again my trash can (as I avoid committing to the ultimate inevitability of chunking a brand new piece of hardware into the garbage). I’m now here on Amazon, shopping for another tablet, assuming I’ll return to WACOM, writing off the sunk cost of trying to save money by buying cheap, and remembering the old adage that you get what you pay for. Caveat emptor.