The ultimate PC replacement? Wacom Companion 2 [Reviews]

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Wacom_3
A tablet that I can actually work on.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

The 9.7-inch iPad Pro was titled the ‘Ultimate PC replacement’ by Apple, and for a lot of people it is. But for myself, mainly working within the creative world designing graphics, editing videos and conjuring up visual effects — this isn’t really possible on the iPad Pro yet.

But I think I’ve found the solution in the form of Wacom’s latest tablet, the Cintiq Companion 2.

Check out my full video review below.

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Wacom Companion 2

The Wacom Companion 2 has a 1440p, 13.3-inch display with specs ranging from an Intel Core i3 with 64GB of storage all the way up to the i7 with 512GB. You can run the Cintiq purely as a graphics tablet alongside your Mac or, the smarter option, run it as a standalone tablet.

Having that much power behind the tablet, it seems like a bit of a waste to basically use it as a screen. Running on Windows 8.1 (although I upgraded to 10 with no problem) took a bit of getting used to. I certainly hadn’t touched anything with the Windows logo since XP. But once I got past the initial body shock, I really began to enjoy using the Companion 2.

With the i5 powering my review unit, it was certainly powerful enough to combat all of my graphic design needs along with some basic video editing. I actually edited part of this video review on it as a test and it faired well. Had I filmed in 4k though, I feel the outcome would have been completely different.

The tablet comes with a ‘Pro Pen’ which is pressure-sensitive and even tracks the angle that you hold the pen to help you illustrate those fine details within your digital masterpieces.

With a starting price of $1,500, and my i5 model coming in at a cool $1,599, this could be a hard pill to swallow for a lot of people who see this as just a ‘tablet’. But if you work with any Adobe apps, or even any creative apps, the Wacom Cintiq Companion 2 is definitely an option to consider when you next decide to upgrade your workflow.

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Buy from: Amazon

Wacom provided Cult of Mac with a review unit for this article. Read Cult of Mac’s reviews policy.

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