Design-wise I get it, and with a larger workspace it really isn’t an issue, but if space is limited it is an annoyance. The Wacom Cintiq Pro 27 is All I Want to Use Now The Wacom Cintiq Pro 27 is heavy, but no more bulky than a typical PC monitor. (Image credit: Future) During our time with the Cintiq Pro 27, we worked primarily with three software programs – Clip Studio Paint, Adobe Photoshop and 3D-modelling program Blender – and the display made working with each of these programs comfortable and enjoyable, as well as helping workflow feel more fluid and faster than usual. The Cintiq Pro 27’s screen was a little dimmer than I expected which resulted in colors appearing to be a bit muted, but the display still has incredibly great resolution and color accuracy. The grip and control buttons on the sides are pretty useful — if for nothing else other than repositioning the screen — and the Pro Pen 3, while not the most impressive looking, was incredibly accurate and handled exceptionally well, especially since the nib didn’t have the trademark “wobble” that’s present in nearly every other pen on the market. Finally, the entire surface supports multi-touch, so you can leverage the entire screen as a touchpad for hand gestures for additional workflow enhancements should you desire. The Wacom Cintiq Pro 27 works out of the box with preloaded gestures for both your fingers and the included Wacom Pro Pen 3, and these will be familiar and feel intuitive to anyone used to working with other tablets such as an iPad.

The screen is warm when used all day, but it’s not hot. Then again, I tested the display in a climate-controlled room, and in late autumn into winter, at that. If your studio gets warm, especially on hot summer days, your results may vary, but at least in a typical 72-degree F “room temperature” setting, the display and fan don't present problems. I even tried to pump up the brightness and make it a little warmer than usual in my testing space, but the fan never got distractingly loud, nor did the screen heat up too much. Wacom confirms a new fan design was used for this model, and the ventilation panels are also substantially redesigned—in both cases, it worked.As mentioned, the Cintiq does support touch but I could take or leave them. For the most part, I left them. After some initial testing of the touch capabilities, which do work, I never felt there was a scenario where using them instead of the programmable buttons or my nearby keyboard was a better option. Along the top right (rear) corner of the Cintiq, you’ll find a series of buttons for powering the device on and off, toggling the touch features, and activating the Cintiq System Menu which can be further navigated by using the “grip” buttons on either side of the device. The experience is the best I’ve tested to date. While retouching photos, it was super easy to get even single-pixel accuracy when zoomed in which is wildly impressive considering how shakey and inaccurate my coffee-fueled body tends to be. As for color-gamut testing, the Cintiq Pro 27 could hardly have done better. Its 100% Adobe RGB coverage (see chromaticity chart above) exceeded its 99% rating, and its DCI-P3 coverage (below) of 97.4% fell just barely short of its claimed 98%.

While the stand is an absolute beast and weighs more than the Cintiq itself, you won’t need any additional tools, grips, cables, or stabilizers to get it installed and start using it. Simply slide the Cintiq into the mount and you’re ready to roll. It has a bit of an odd shape (think a camera lens diagram with the lens hood as the arms on the base) and is nearly two-feet wide at the longest part. It is super versatile though, and allows you to position the Cintiq in a nearly 90-degree vertical position (much like a standard monitor) all the way to laying flat on the table like an actual drawing pad. The Cintiq Pro 27 showed good brightness at 344 nits, and its 991:1 contrast ratio effectively matched its 1,000:1 rating by Wacom. You also have access to a radial menu—the top Express Key on the left, by default, calls up the radial menu onscreen. In fact, there are two radial menus—one called Radial, the other called Express. Both pull up similar-looking wheels of useful commands and options, and each option can be swapped out for something else. The wheel is useful for accessing commonly needed actions, like Save or Tab, that might not quite warrant their own physical Express Key. When it appears onscreen, its circular interface hovers over whatever app you have open, taking up little space, with its options easily selectable. The company says the screen features no parallax or latency and in my testing, I can pretty much confirm this to be accurate. The feeling of the pen-to-screen was incredibly smooth and natural and after a week of long days of testing, there were barely even any fingerprint smudges on the screen, which tells me it combats the side effects of daily use very well. Wacom Cintiq Pro 27: The Pen On its own, the Cintiq Pro 27 weighs a healthy 15.9 pounds, but that stat is not terribly useful—the stand, at 23.6 by 14.1 by 12.6 inches, weighs another 19.8 pounds, so the total weight of the system is nearly 36 pounds. Unless you have a VESA mount you plan to use instead of the stand, you’ll be adding some substantial weight to whatever flat surface you place this on.The cabinet has built-in cable management cinches, and some Velcro cable-management ties are also included. According to Wacom, the system ships with a USB-C-to-USB-C cable (5.9 feet), a USB-C-to-USB-A cable (5.9 feet), an HDMI cable (5.9 feet), and a mini DisplayPort-to-DisplayPort cable. (Our review unit came with only the cables necessary for the iMac we tested the display with.) Wacom doesn't project any rated coverage claims for sRGB, but designers working with purely web-based art will be pleased with its 100% sRGB coverage (see below). Like most other modern tablets, the Cintiq Pro 27 Pro Pen 3 can recognize the degree of tilt and pressure up to 8,192 levels using Wacom’s Electro-Magnetic Resonance technology. Messing with it by drawing (poorly as you’ll see below) some lines and shapes and testing pressure levels, speed and angles, the pen was perfectly responsive and accurate.