Genius G-Pen 4500 Graphics Tablet Review

If you are looking for your first ever digital tablet for use at home, then you will find exactly what you are looking for with the Genius G-Pen 4500. Genius are a solid make and although not as perfect and as recognised as others such as Wacom, you will find that they deliver consistently good products at very reasonable prices. You may think you need a Wacom Intuos4 for a little scribbling and digital art, but the G-Pen 4500 will be perfect to start you off. A cordless pen with 2 buttons and a 3 button wheel mouse are included as standard.

Aggressively priced against the monster that is Wacom, Genius have decided to go with a comfortable 4 by 5.5 inch drawing area that will be perfect if you just want to annotate some documents or do a small amount of digital art using the supplied version of Adobe Photoshop CS or Corel Painter IX. The G-Pen graphics tablet also comes with software that allows you to easily sign your documents or emails as well as write directly to applications such as Skype or MSN Messenger.

Our Tests

We found that the tablet installed perfectly on both our PC and also our Macbook without any issues. We recommend that you go and download the latest driver from the Genius website if you are using on a PC. The one that was supplied in the box was pretty out of date and the latest version adds a few extra bells and whistles.

The software supplied with the G-Pen 4500 is pretty much what you would expect from a budget tablet. We installed Corel Painter IX to test the device and had no issues, also the PenSuite software was easy to install and allowed us to write direct into a number of applications such as Microsoft Word.

The cordless pen and mouse both handle well and we had no issues with tracking on the pad. We were able to easily draw and move around the screen and found no dead spots at all. Some complain that the G-Pen 4500 powers off after a short period of time, but we had no problems at all. The pen is comfortable to hold and has the usual 2 buttons that can be used to select different pen types or thicknesses. We had ours set to the eraser and paint brush.

Should I Buy The G-Pen 4500?

If you are looking for a no-frills tablet that delivers a solid result, then any of the range from Genius will be perfect for you. For those of you with kids who might want to venture into making images using a tablet, this model will be a good start. You may want to opt for the slightly larger Genius Mousepen 8x6 model, which will give you a little extra space to work in. And for a slight hike in price, this may be the better option. See our Genius Mousepen 8x6 review for more information.

Genius Pensketch USB 9×12

The Genius PenSketch 9x12 USB Graphics tablet is the latest device that has hit our review desk here at Graphics Tablet Reviews. This competent unit sits well with the range of other Genius tablets and input devices and will certainly not leave you wanting for extra features.

The Pensketch tablet is pretty much as you would expect. A 9 by 12 inch active area is surrounded with a simple grey bezel. There is a line of buttons that can be customized running along the top of the active area, which can get in the way when drawing. Only Wacom have realised that this causes problems and has removed this feature from their range of Intuos tablets. It is often the little things like this that make or break a product.

The tablet connects to the PC or Mac via a standard USB cable and apart from the battery for the pen or wireless mouse, this is all you need to get started. I would recommend that you download the latest drivers from the Genius website as they have recently been updated to work with newer software products such as the Adobe CS4 range.

The Genius Pensketch 9x12 features 1024 levels of sensitivity and comes packaged with a slightly lightweight 3 button cordless pen. Also in the box you will find a CD with drivers and some sample/trial software. The box we had came packaged with the full version of Adobe Photoshop Elements 3 and a trial of Adobe Photoshop CS and Corel Painter IX. Quite a good choice of software really, considering the price point that this item retails at.

As with other Genius graphics tablets, this device has quite a few low reviews if you read through them on Amazon. The unit that we tested did not suffer from any manufacturing defects and worked perfectly when we tested it. We used it to write on some Word documents as well as give our artistic stylings a bash in Photoshop. Some have complained that the pen is not picked up when scanning it above the surface of the tablet but we experienced none of these issues at all.

Overall and to sum up, this is a worthy addition to the Genius range of graphics tablets and it should not be overlooked. Some people prefer to opt for well known makes such as Wacom and the old adage is true; you get what you pay for. If you are looking for a reasonably priced, no frills product, the the Genius Pensketch USB 9x12 is a perfect investment.