For any creative, there’s a unique and deeply frustrating chasm between the fluid ideas in your mind and the clunky reality of executing them with a mouse. I remember spending hours trying to create smooth, tapered lines in Photoshop, clicking and dragging, undoing, and re-dragging, only to end up with a shaky, lifeless result. It felt like trying to paint a masterpiece with a bar of soap. That natural connection between hand, eye, and canvas was completely lost in translation. This digital barrier can stifle creativity, turning an exciting project into a tedious chore and preventing aspiring artists from ever truly unlocking their potential. The search for a tool that bridges this gap—one that feels as intuitive as a pencil on paper but offers the power of a digital workflow—is what leads many of us to the world of graphic tablets.
- Digital creativity made easy Sketch, draw and edit photos with great experience, draw your own highquality digital masterpiece
- THE NATURAL PEN EXPERIENCE With its light weight, it is comfortable enough to make drawing and painting natural again, just like pen and paper.
What to Consider Before Buying a Graphic Tablet
A graphic tablet is more than just an item; it’s a key solution for unleashing digital creativity. It replaces the awkwardness of a mouse with a pressure-sensitive pen and surface, directly translating the nuances of your hand movements—pressure, angle, and speed—into digital brushstrokes. This unlocks a level of control and expressiveness that is simply impossible with traditional peripherals. For illustrators, photographers, and designers, it means faster editing, more natural-looking artwork, and a more ergonomic workflow that can reduce wrist strain over long sessions. For educators and students, it transforms a computer into an interactive whiteboard for dynamic presentations and collaborative note-taking. It’s the essential bridge to a fluid, intuitive, and professional digital workflow.
The ideal customer for this type of product is someone taking their first serious steps into digital art, a student on a budget, or a seasoned artist needing a reliable, portable backup. It’s for those who prioritize a natural drawing feel and brand reliability over a long list of bells and whistles. However, it might not be suitable for high-end professionals whose workflow depends heavily on programmable shortcut keys (ExpressKeys), wireless connectivity, or the ultra-fine nuance of tilt recognition and 8192+ levels of pressure sensitivity. These users might feel limited by its simplicity and would be better served by looking at professional-grade models from Wacom’s Intuos Pro line or screen-based displays.
Before investing, consider these crucial points in detail:
- Dimensions & Space: Pay close attention to the “active area” versus the tablet’s overall physical footprint. The active area is your actual digital canvas. A medium size, like that of the Wacom CTL-672 Medium Drawing Tablet, is often the sweet spot, providing enough room for sweeping arm movements without consuming your entire desk space like larger models can.
- Performance & Features: The core performance metric is pressure sensitivity, measured in levels. While pro models boast 8192 levels, a tablet with 2048 levels is more than sufficient for learning and producing high-quality work. Also consider resolution (LPI – Lines Per Inch), which determines detail, and whether you need features like shortcut keys, touch input, or wireless connectivity.
- Materials & Durability: Most graphic tablets are made from durable plastics. Look for a drawing surface with a slight texture, or “tooth,” which provides a satisfying friction that mimics the feel of paper. Wacom, as a brand, has a long-standing reputation for building robust products that withstand years of heavy use, a critical factor for a tool you’ll rely on daily.
- Ease of Use & Maintenance: A great entry-level tablet should be plug-and-play. Setup should involve a simple driver download and a single USB connection. Long-term care involves protecting the surface from scratches and occasionally replacing the pen nibs, which wear down over time, so check if replacements are readily available and affordable.
Understanding these fundamentals will empower you to choose a tablet that not only fits your budget but also perfectly aligns with your creative ambitions.
While the Wacom CTL-672 Medium Drawing Tablet is an excellent choice, it’s always wise to see how it stacks up against the competition. For a broader look at all the top models, we highly recommend checking out our complete, in-depth guide:
- 【Widely Application】UGEE M708 graphic drawing tablet, features 10 x 6 inch large active drawing space with papery texture surface, provides enormous and smooth drawing for your digital artwork...
- 【PASSIVE and ENVIRONMENT-FRIENDLY PEN】-- It is a battery-free stylus which adopts the most advanced passive technology, no battery and no charging required. This environment-friendly pen, allows...
- One by Wacom Medium: Graphics tablet with an active area of 8.5 x 5.3 inch (21,6 x 13,5 cm) – Perfect digital drawing pad with a variety of possibilities: whether digital sketching, photo-editing,...
Unboxing the Wacom CTL-672: First Impressions and Core Features
Opening the box for the Wacom CTL-672 Medium Drawing Tablet is a refreshingly straightforward experience. There are no unnecessary frills; just the essentials you need to get started. Inside, we found the slim, black tablet itself, the battery-free stylus, a USB-A cable, and a small packet with replacement nibs and a nib removal tool. The tablet is incredibly lightweight and thin, yet it feels solid and well-constructed, a testament to Wacom’s renowned build quality. Its matte black finish is resistant to fingerprints, and the subtle dotted pattern marking the active drawing area is a nice touch.
The first thing that struck us was its minimalist design. There are no buttons, dials, or touch strips on the tablet’s surface—just a pure, uninterrupted canvas for your ideas. This design philosophy clearly targets users who want to plug in and draw without a complex setup. The pen itself is light, comfortable to hold, and perfectly balanced. The absence of a battery means it never needs charging, a huge advantage for workflow consistency. This initial impression is one of purposeful simplicity—a tool designed to do one thing exceptionally well: connect your hand to your digital art. For those who want to see its full feature set and user reviews, the product’s focus on core functionality is its greatest strength.
Advantages
- Exceptional Value: Delivers a professional-grade core drawing experience from a top-tier brand at an entry-level price.
- Reliable and Simple: True plug-and-play functionality with famously stable Wacom drivers means less time troubleshooting and more time creating.
- Battery-Free Pen: The EMR stylus is lightweight, ergonomic, and never needs charging, ensuring it’s always ready when inspiration strikes.
- Generous Drawing Area: The medium size provides ample space for expressive strokes, a significant upgrade over smaller, more cramped tablets.
Drawbacks
- No ExpressKeys: The lack of customizable shortcut buttons means a heavier reliance on your keyboard for actions like undo, zoom, and changing tools.
- Lower Pressure Sensitivity: With 2048 levels, it’s highly capable but less nuanced than the 8192 levels found on more expensive professional tablets.
A Deep Dive into the Wacom CTL-672 Medium Drawing Tablet’s Real-World Performance
A spec sheet can only tell you so much. To truly understand a graphic tablet, you have to spend hours with it, letting it become an extension of your hand. We put the Wacom CTL-672 Medium Drawing Tablet through its paces across a range of creative applications—from detailed line art in Clip Studio Paint and concept sketching in Krita to intricate photo retouching in Adobe Photoshop. Our goal was to push past the numbers and evaluate the real-world feel and flow of the creative process. This is where Wacom’s heritage shines through, revealing a tool that is far more capable than its modest price tag might suggest.
The Drawing Experience: Precision, Pressure, and Flow
The heart of any graphic tablet is the synergy between its surface and pen, and this is where the Wacom CTL-672 truly excels. The 8.5 x 5.3-inch active area is surfaced with a fine texture that provides a subtle, satisfying friction. It’s a beautifully calibrated resistance that mimics the “tooth” of high-quality paper, preventing the slick, glassy feeling of drawing on an unprepared surface. This tactile feedback provides greater control over your lines and makes the transition from traditional media feel remarkably natural.
At the center of this experience is the pressure sensitivity. While the 2048 levels might seem low compared to the 8192+ levels advertised on pro models, in practice, we found it to be exceptionally responsive and more than sufficient for a vast range of artistic styles. In our tests, the tablet flawlessly translated the lightest of strokes for delicate hatching into bold, broad lines when we applied more force. The pressure curve felt smooth and predictable right out of the box, allowing for elegant, tapered lines with ease. This level of control is transformative for tasks like inking comics or painting digital portraits, where line weight variation is key to creating depth and dynamism. It’s a feature that really sets it apart in the entry-level market.
The battery-free pen is another major highlight. Wacom’s patented EMR (Electro-Magnetic Resonance) technology means the pen is powered wirelessly by the tablet itself. This results in a stylus that is incredibly lightweight and perfectly balanced, free from the top-heavy feel that battery-powered pens often have. Over long drawing sessions, this ergonomic design significantly reduces hand fatigue. There are no interruptions for charging, no concerns about battery life degrading over time—it just works, every single time. This reliability is a cornerstone of a productive workflow.
Design and Ergonomics: Built for Simplicity and Comfort
The physical design of the Wacom CTL-672 Medium Drawing Tablet is a masterclass in functional minimalism. Its slim profile (a mere 8.7mm thick) and light weight (under a pound) make it both a comfortable desktop companion and an easily portable tool for artists on the go. It slips into a laptop bag without adding any significant bulk. The simple, clean lines and all-black finish give it a professional look that belies its affordable price. We particularly appreciated the reversible design, which allows both right-handed and left-handed users to use it comfortably by simply flipping it and changing a setting in the driver software.
The most significant design choice, and its primary point of debate, is the complete absence of ExpressKeys—the programmable shortcut buttons found on most other tablets. This was a deliberate decision by Wacom to streamline the device and hit an aggressive price point. For artists accustomed to these keys, it requires a period of adjustment, forcing a greater reliance on the keyboard for shortcuts like zooming, changing brush sizes, or undoing actions. However, for a beginner, this is less of a drawback and more of a simplification. It removes a layer of complexity, allowing the user to focus purely on the fundamentals of drawing. We found that positioning our keyboard to the side provided a perfectly efficient workflow. The tablet’s generous medium size offers a fantastic canvas that makes it a joy to use, a feature worth the tradeoff for many, and you can check the latest price and availability to see the incredible value it offers.
Setup and Software Compatibility: From Box to Canvas in Minutes
Getting the Wacom CTL-672 Medium Drawing Tablet up and running is an absolute breeze. The process is as close to “plug-and-play” as it gets. We simply connected the tablet to our computer (both a Windows 11 PC and a MacBook Pro) via the included USB cable. The operating systems recognized it immediately as a basic input device. To unlock its full potential, a quick visit to the Wacom support website is required to download the latest driver.
The driver installation took only a couple of minutes, and once installed, it provides a powerful control panel for customization. Here, we were able to adjust the pen’s pressure sensitivity curve, program the two buttons on the side of the stylus (typically set to right-click and pan/scroll), and map the tablet’s active area to our monitor(s). This last feature is crucial for multi-monitor setups, allowing you to lock the tablet’s input to a single screen to maintain the correct aspect ratio and hand-eye coordination. We tested the tablet with the entire Adobe Creative Cloud suite, Krita, Blender, ZBrush, and Clip Studio Paint, and it performed flawlessly across the board. The Wacom name carries immense weight in the software world, ensuring near-universal compatibility and stability. This hassle-free experience is a huge benefit for anyone who wants to create art, not fight with their hardware, making the Wacom CTL-672 a fantastic choice for a seamless start.
Community Feedback: What Real Users Are Saying
In our research across various online communities and user forums, the sentiment surrounding the Wacom CTL-672 Medium Drawing Tablet is overwhelmingly positive, particularly among its target audience. Many users praise it as the perfect “first tablet,” lauding its incredible value and the peace of mind that comes with the Wacom brand. A common theme is its sheer reliability; users frequently note that it “just works” right out of the box with minimal fuss, allowing them to focus on their art. The natural-feeling drawing surface and the lightweight, battery-free pen are consistently highlighted as standout features that make the creative process enjoyable and intuitive.
On the other hand, the most common criticisms align with our own findings. More experienced artists and professionals often point to the lack of programmable ExpressKeys as a significant drawback, as it interrupts a button-based workflow and requires constant keyboard use. A few users transitioning from higher-end models also mentioned that while the 2048 pressure levels are very good, they can feel the difference in nuance compared to the 8192 levels they were used to. This feedback reinforces our assessment: it is a stellar device for beginners and enthusiasts, but professionals may find its simplicity limiting.
How Does the Wacom CTL-672 Stack Up Against the Competition?
The Wacom CTL-672 Medium Drawing Tablet exists in a competitive market. While it stands strong on its own merits, understanding how it compares to key alternatives is crucial for making an informed decision. We’ve selected three distinct competitors to illustrate where the CTL-672 fits in the broader landscape of graphic tablets.
1. XP-Pen DECO03 Graphics Tablet Wireless
- XP-PEN DECO 03, with a red wheel at the corner and six all-customizable shortcuts, very effective to improve your workflow. The garphic DECO 03 tablet is compatible with all right-handed and...
- The graphics tablet comes with all the necessary accessories, but does not come with any graphics software
The XP-Pen DECO03 presents a compelling challenge by offering more features for a similar price. Its biggest advantages are wireless connectivity, 8192 levels of pressure sensitivity, and a programmable red dial alongside six ExpressKeys. For artists who crave shortcuts and want to untether from their desk, the DECO03 is a very attractive option. However, the trade-off often lies in the driver software and long-term reliability, where Wacom’s decades of refinement give it a distinct edge in stability and compatibility. The Wacom CTL-672 is the choice for those who prioritize a simple, bulletproof core drawing experience over extra features.
2. Wacom Intuos Pro S Bluetooth Drawing Tablet
- Wacom Intuos Pro Small: Black, wireless graphics tablet with an active area of 6.3 x 3.9 inch – Perfect digital drawing pad with a variety of possibilities: whether professional graphic design,...
- Pen included: Thanks to battery-free Wacom Pro Pen 2 with 8,192 pressure levels & 60° tilt recognition, your Wacom drawing tablet ensures maximum precision & natural feeling. Additional 6 standard &...
The Wacom Intuos Pro S represents the next logical step up within the Wacom ecosystem. It is aimed squarely at serious hobbyists and professional artists. While it has a smaller active area (“S” for small), it packs in a wealth of pro-grade features the CTL-672 lacks: Bluetooth connectivity, a touch ring, customizable ExpressKeys, tilt recognition for the pen, and 8192 levels of pressure. The build quality is also more premium. This all comes at a significantly higher price. The Intuos Pro is the better tool for professionals, but the Wacom CTL-672 Medium Drawing Tablet offers a much larger drawing canvas and a far better value proposition for those who don’t need those advanced features.
3. HUION Kamvas Pro 24 4K Pen Display
- 【4K UHD Resolution】The immersive 23.8-inch screen boasts 4K 3840 x 2160 UHD resolution, which is 4 times higher than FHD. It can present more details and clearer pictures with a pixel density of...
- 【Superb Color Accuracy】The pen display use QLED technology, making quantum dots as the backlight, thereby achieving better backlight utilization and improving the color gamut volume up to 140%...
Comparing the CTL-672 to the HUION Kamvas Pro 24 is like comparing a sketchbook to a full-sized professional art easel—they are in completely different leagues. The Kamvas is a pen display, meaning you draw directly onto its massive 23.8-inch 4K screen. This provides the most direct and immersive digital painting experience possible. It’s a high-end, professional studio tool with a price tag to match, requiring significant desk space and investment. The Wacom CTL-672, in contrast, is a portable, affordable, and screenless tablet. It’s the perfect entry point, while the Kamvas is a destination for established digital artists seeking the ultimate workflow.
Our Final Verdict: Is the Wacom CTL-672 Medium Drawing Tablet the Right Choice for You?
After extensive testing, we can confidently say that the Wacom CTL-672 Medium Drawing Tablet is an outstanding piece of hardware that punches well above its weight class. It strips away the non-essentials to deliver a pure, refined, and incredibly satisfying core drawing experience. Its strength lies not in a long list of features, but in the flawless execution of the fundamentals. The combination of a generous drawing area, a responsive and ergonomic battery-free pen, and Wacom’s rock-solid driver stability makes it a formidable tool for anyone starting their digital art journey.
While the absence of shortcut keys and the lower pressure sensitivity might deter some seasoned professionals, these are precisely the trade-offs that make it so accessible and successful as an entry-level device. It removes complexity and allows you to build a strong foundation. If you are a student, an aspiring artist, a hobbyist, or an educator looking for a reliable, high-quality, and affordable gateway into the world of digital creativity, you simply cannot go wrong with this tablet. It offers the best of the Wacom experience without the professional price tag. If you’re ready to close the gap between your imagination and your screen, the Wacom CTL-672 Medium Drawing Tablet is one of the smartest investments you can make for your creative future.
Last update on 2025-11-16 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API