The $649.95 Cintiq 16, which Wacom refers to as a "creative pen display," lets an artist draw, navigate menus, and click buttons on its 15.6-inch screen using the included Wacom Pro Pen 2 stylus.
It's an interactive monitor, attaching to a computer rather than running its own resident programs as would a tablet.
The Cintiq 16 lacks some screen features and connectivity choices found on the Cintiq Pro 16—not to mention its gesture-based touch control—but it comes in at a price that's far more suitable for art students, amateur designers, and professionals on tight budgets.
Sweet Cintiq 16: Where It Fits In
In Wacom's lineup, the Cintiq 16 and other Cintiq displays lie between the company's Wacom Intuos tablets—with which the artist draws with a stylus on a pad or surface and sees the results on a computer's monitor—and the Cintiq Pro line.
The Cintiq Pro 16 ($1,499.95) has full multi-touch capabilities for gesture-based finger control, a higher resolution, more connection choices, and a wider color gamut than the non-Pro Cintiq 16.
While the Cintiq 16's screen has a full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) native resolution and can display up to 96 percent of the sRGB color space, the Cintiq Pro 16 can display up to 94 percent of the much wider Adobe RGB gamut, and it features a 4K UHD (3,840-by-2,160-pixel) native resolution when used with a DisplayPort connection (which isn't offered with the Cintiq 16).
That comes to four times the total number of pixels as the Cintiq 16 (twice the vertical and horizontal pixel counts).
Should you use the Cintiq 16 Pro's HDMI port instead of DisplayPort, you'd top out at a QHD resolution (2,560 by 1,440 pixels).
The Cintiq 16 connects via HDMI and USB Type-A, while the Cintiq 16 Pro offers DisplayPort, HDMI, and USB Type-C.
A step above the Cintiq Pro 16 (in capabilities and price) is the Wacom MobileStudio Pro 16, a 15.6-inch tablet with a 4K screen, running Windows 10, a Core i7 processor, 16GB of memory, and a 512GB SSD.
It's reasonably portable and runs full versions of graphics programs, as well as other software.
The key input device for the Cintiq 16 is the Wacom Pro Pen 2 stylus.
This stylus is common to other Wacom products, including the MobileStudio Pro 16.
It's slightly shorter than the Apple Pencil($94.00 at Amazon), and it has several advantages over it.
It doesn't require charging, as it draws power from the Cintiq 16 through Wacom's electro-magnetic resonance (EMR) technology, which eliminates the need for a battery.
The pen comes bundled with the Cintiq, while Apple sells its Pencil as a $99 accessory.
The Cerberus of Adapter Cables
The Cintiq 16's 3-in-1 adapter cable, which plugs into the power port on the back of the Cintiq 16 after you remove a protective door, is quite the complex connector.
It branches into three cables, two of them ending in HDMI and USB Type-A connectors, respectively.
Both of these must be connected to computer ports for the display and pen functions to work.
The third cable ends in a jack, to which a cable to the power adapter connects.
Finally, a power cord connects the adapter to an outlet.
This arrangement is workable but a bit unwieldy.
Keeping the multiple cords from getting tangled is the worst of it.
As I discovered, after plugging the USB connector into the computer that PC Labs uses to test monitors and getting a "No Signal" message, it is necessary to plug both the HDMI and USB cables into the computer; the former carries the signal to be displayed, and the pen functions are controlled through the latter.
I also am using the Cintiq 16 with my Dell XPS 13($949.99 at Dell) laptop, which is so future-looking that it has only USB Type-C and Thunderbolt ports, and I have to yoke it to a hub, to which I connected the HDMI and USB cables.
Both the testbed and my laptop worked fine after the Cintiq 16 automatically installed a Wacom driver on them.
Color and Brightness Testing
I took the Cintiq 16 through our standard luminance and color-fidelity testing for monitors, using a Klein K10-A colorimeter and SpectraCal CalMAN 5 software.
The luminance (brightness per unit area) registered at 260.7 nits (candelas per meter squared), exceeding its rated brightness of 210 nits.
I calculated the contrast ratio at 867:1, a bit under its 1000:1 rating.
I made the chromaticity chart shown here for the Cintiq 16.
The area within the triangle represents the colors that can be produced by mixing the primary colors red, green, and blue, while the area bounded by the curve approximates the range of colors that can be discerned with the human eye.
The circles represent my color measurements, which are fairly evenly spaced and mostly just outside the triangle, indicating good color accuracy and a color gamut closely approaching the sRGB space.
Our Artist's Impressions
Jose Ruiz, Daxdi's production designer, took the Cintiq 16 for a run on his Mac, using Photoshop.
He normally uses a Wacom Intuos Pro Paper Edition($599.95 at Amazon), a screen-less drawing tablet to which he moved in 2017 after helping review it.
As he was already proficient with the stylus, he was easily able to change tack in using it with the Cintiq 16, and liked being able to draw and perform other tasks directly on the screen, right on the art he was working on.
One issue he encountered, and saw as a minor annoyance, was a slight lag between taking an action with the stylus and it being shown on the screen.
It doesn't appear to be caused by normal input lag from the Cintiq.
In testing with a Leo Bodnar Lag Tester, the Cintiq 16 showed an input lag of 9.5ms, one of the better scores we have seen and well within the range in which input lag should show no visible artifacts.
In my own testing on Windows machines, I did not encounter such a lag between taking action and it being rendered onscreen.
As our monitor testbed has a limited selection of software, I did most of my testing on my Dell laptop, running Photoshop and Lightroom, two programs that I, as an amateur photographer, use frequently on Windows PCs.
Although I have used an Apple Pencil on occasion with my Apple iPad Pro( at Amazon) with various drawing programs, my Photoshop experience has been strictly with a computer (mostly one with a touch screen) and mouse.
The pen felt comfortable and responsive—it has 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity—and it is at least as easy to use as the slightly longer Apple Pencil.
The pen has a rocker button that is good for entering commands and navigating menus, such as Wacom's own circular "radial menu" system.
I enjoyed working with the Cintiq 16 and for the most part found it a pleasure to use.
I did find there was a bit of a learning curve in using it with Photoshop and Lightroom, and it would take some adjustment in integrating the tablet and pen into my setup.
(At times, I found myself using my mouse to perform actions that I could have done with the pen.) That said, I could see myself investing in the likes of the Cintiq 16 if I ever have reason to up my game.
The iPad Factor
Speaking of which, the iPad Pro, which also supports multi-touch, has developed a bit of a following among commercial artists (including a few in our office).
Most use it, though, in conjunction with a Mac, as the iPad lacks full versions of some widely used programs, especially Adobe's Creative Cloud (CC) staples such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign.
Although Adobe has announced that a full version of Photoshop CC is coming to the iPad this year, the iPad is currently limited to Photoshop Express.
The Adobe Illustrator Draw app is a basic vector drawing program without the full feature range of Adobe Illustrator CC.
As for InDesign, well, fuhgeddaboutit—we're not counting on seeing it as an iPad app anytime soon.
But the aforementioned "light" versions of Adobe apps, as well as non-Adobe offerings like Procreate, are capable in their own right and boost the iPad Pro's cred as an artist's tool.
One can import their creations made on an iPad Pro into Adobe's Creative Cloud (CC) programs running on a Mac or Windows computer.
The iPad Pro costs as much as, if not more than, the Cintiq 16.
(The 11-inch model starts at $799 without the Apple Pencil, and the 12.9-inch iPad Pro starts at $999.) And both iPad Pro versions have considerably smaller screens than the Cintiq 16.
But bear in mind that the iPad Pros are true tablets with their own OS, and they can run apps, while the Cintiq 16 needs to be connected to a computer.
And you can take an iPad Pro with you most anywhere, which isn't the case with the Cintiq 16, its multi-headed cable, and the necessary connected PC.
Still, iPad Pro artists might consider getting a Cintiq 16 for their studio, given its larger screen and wider support for high-end graphics programs.
Semi-Pro? The Cintiq 16 Is the Way to Go
Professional artists who have the money to spare will likely spring for the Cintiq Pro 16 over the Cintiq 16, for its UHD resolution, wider color gamut, expanded connectivity, and gesture-based multi-touch abilities.
While the Wacom Cintiq 16 lacks these features, it comes in at a much lower price than the Cintiq Pro 16, making it a great choice for students or for creative types on strict budgets.
It lets you do onscreen what would otherwise require a drawing tablet or a mouse, and it is a strong buy for making that possible at an affordable price.
