Cintiq 22

CREATIVE SPACE With the lowest price we’ve seen for a Cintiq of this size, Wacom’s drawing display could change the way you create art

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The Wacom Cintiq 22 is the latest model in the company’s drive to make this respected digital art brand more affordable. The Cintiq range is neatly divided into two: Cintiq offers relatively basic displays at lower prices, while Cintiq Pro provides a premium experience – particularly a 4K display in larger models – with prices to match. The Cintiq 22 joins the Cintiq 16 in the more affordable sector.

The Cintiq 22 offers a full HD screen (1,920 x 1,080 pixels) – the same screen resolution as the smaller Cintiq 16. That means there’s an important trade-off between the two. The Cintiq 22 gives you a physically larger drawing area for more comfortable, expressive arm movement while drawing, but the screen image is less sharp than on the Cintiq 16. Yet while the picture on the Cintiq 22 is a little soft compared with other Cintiq models, it’s comfortable to work from – and in all other respects, the drawing experience is excellent. The larger size compared with the Cintiq 16 really matters when you’re in an extended drawing session: it frees you up to make more extensive pen strokes.

The other potential drawback of this display compared with the Cintiq Pro line is the colour gamut (how many colours the screen can display). The quoted gamut for the Cintiq 22 is 72 per cent NTSC – that’s similar to a budget monitor. Cintiq Pro displays have a colour gamut of 94 per cent NTSC. While that technical difference sounds damning, bear in mind that the Cintiq 22 is able to present 96 per cent of the range of colours supported by the sRGB colour profile, which many artists apply to their images by default.