Home > Consumer Reviews > Bamboo Pen

I lose pens all of the time. Of course, usually they are the kind I can afford to lose, and they are easy to replace, and eventually they turn up. It's really a pain, though, when the pen is a Bamboo Pen - my daughter and I use the tablet pretty regularly with our laptop (usually with Corel Painter 11) and every once in a while one of us will misplace the pen. The trouble is, we don't usually use the laptop at a desk so it's easy to leave the pen and tablet and computer all together somewhere or other and then someone else in the family might unplug the tablet and wander off with the laptop, leaving the pen stranded before it gets picked up and put away. That's a recipe for loss. Usually it turns up, but that's inconvenient since it means we can't use the tablet in the meantime. One time it didn't show up and, after a few weeks of hoping it would and a couple of dedicated searches to be sure, I finally broke down and ordered a new one here on Amazon. This time, though, I ordered a Bamboo Carry Case to come with it to be sure we didn't lose it again.

We're very happy with the new pen. It works great, and it's nice to be able to use the tablet again. At first I was frustrated by the fact I had to shell out this much for a new pen -- but then I thought about it, and it is much better than having to replace the whole unit, and I realized that a fancy normal pen can easily cost much more than the price of this one and as far as I'm concerned this is much more useful than a prestige pen.

Note that it's not just for drawing. With this and the tablet installed (we use it on our MacBook), you can set things up to have the pen function like a mouse - where you can hover over the pad to move it and touch down or use one of the pen's buttons to click. The tip is pressure sensitive, which means if you press harder while drawing the lines can be thicker and if you touch lightly the lines will be faint, and you can adjust this sensitivity. If you are drawing you can turn it over and the back will automatically function as an eraser. You can also go into settings and define what you want the buttons to do. I wrote a review of the Bamboo tablet a couple of years ago suggesting that it wasn't a very good replacement for the mouse, but it interfaces very well with Mac's Leopard operating system, and I now find it easy to use as a mouse when I want to. It's indispensible for drawing and photo retouching applications, and I'm very happy to have one. If you do buy a replacement pen because you lost the old one, though, do yourself a favor and buy the case as well.

First of 3 items to arrive and was well packaged and sealed. WOrked fine the first time, and I was surprised by how quickly it came.

It works just like the one that came with the tablet. I dropped the first one on it's tip which broke the pen. After that it acted like I was touching the tablet when it was an inch away.

I purchased this pen to replace the one that came with my Bamboo tablet: Bamboo (Small) Pen Tablet with Pen Only (it is the same pen). These pens are delicate and the tips can easily get damaged if they are dropped - this is actually my only complain about Wacom's tablets (but I guess it probably happens with others too).