Just got le1600, Review from art perspective.

**Jason161** · 09-27-2009, 08:57 AM

So I just got my Motion LE1600 Yesterday. It came from ebay with all the restore discs and the slate and power cord.
On first impression I was very happy that it was so thin and light, just so much better than the pictures. I also like the pen, its not to shabby.
I got 1gb Ram, and 60gb Hard Drive, 1.5 Pentium M, and View Anywhere display.
I love the angles viewable of this thing, Im really glad I got the one with view anywhere, it pays off alot.
So the hard drive was wiped, and I didnt bother using the restore CD's, also because I dont have an external optical drive anyways, so I made a bootable USB storage drive, and copied windows 7 onto it.
It installed without a hitch, and upon first boot everything worked except the video, sound, and wireless drivers.
I downloaded Dashboard, and video drivers, screen got brighter which was nice.
I still havnt got my sound going, and my wireless see's my network and tries to connect, but it asks for the security key then just trys to connect for about a minute then fails with the troubleshooting box. I dont know why its not connecting, so I tried reinstall and no luck, however it is scanning and picking up networks, so I dunno.
After Windows 7, I installed Sketchbook Pro 2010, and Painter 11. I still have yet to install adobe cs4 master collection and Manga studio ex 4.
Sketchbook pro of course runs like a champ, no pen lag or anything. I installed the wacom tablet driver of course as well.
I was nervous running painter with the mixed reviews on it, but painter 11 ran very smooth, I think even smoother than my laptop with amd x2 2ghz, and 2 gig ram.. Sad really. AMD's have always performed better and clock speed ran higher than advertised, as compared to pentiums which clock speed it always lower than advertised in my experience.
Turning the brush up really big sometimes took a second or 2, but it painted pretty fast. Im very impressed and its very usable, I ordered a 2gig stick of ram, so that should improve the little lag it has when the brush is very big. This was using high resolution image as well.
So I expect about the same from Photoshop, as painter seems to run a little slower on my other computer that PS, but we will see. Im sure it will be usable at least. I have seen good video and great reviews about using Manga Studio on the LE1600 as well. I dunno if it was ex 4 though, so we'll see.
Now on to the sensitivity. I actually didnt really notice a huge difference from the LE1600 and my cintiq. After playing with it for a while longer, I noticed that the jump from light low opacity/size lines to dark/high opacity lines was shorter as far as how much you need to push down on pen, and how fast the jump seems.
However setting the tip feel to hard in the wacom settings seemed to even that out a bit, and in painter using brush tracker, making it hard helps even more.
I was able to easily get a nice smooth gradient with the brush/pencil/charcoal etc. in painter and sketchbook pro with the stock pen. I have no tried my wacom cintiq pen, but I hear it works. I also heard that with that pen it gives you 512 levels of sensitivity over the 256 normal. I dont know if thats bogus or what, but either way.
The LE1600 compared to my cintiq 12wx, and 21 at school, is def. a contender, and with 2gig ram im sure it will do just fine for most things. I am extremely happy with it, so I will repeat what has been said, and try to clear up this whole worry and wonder about pressure sensitivity.
TAKE SHOG'S ADVICE ON HIS VIDEO ABOUT THE CINTIQ vs. 256 Level TABLET!!
THE DIFFERENCE IS SO SLIGHT! STOP WORRYING ABOUT NOT HAVING 1024 LEVELS!
If you set your settings right, its such a small difference. The only thing is that using PS of Painter on a multi layered high resolution project might need more power, but thats just hardware related. Otherwise I can see myself doing all my work on this tablet/digitizer with 256 levels.
Anyways im off to play with it, thanks for all the advice on here and answers to my questions, I hope this helps anyone thinking about it.
I paid 434 shipped for it btw. Screen is perfect, no scratches anywhere on the machine, and came with restore cd's and 60g hard drive, 1gig ram. More than worth it!

**TadakoXIII** · 09-27-2009, 02:31 PM

Is the Wacom Tablet Driver something that helps with pressure sensitivity? Cause as far as sensitivity goes... I couldn't find any options on the LE1600 to turn it on or anything so i had to resort to download something in order to have pressure sensitivity. Was this the same for you or did I just miss something? :'D I'm terribly n00b at the TabletPC technicalities and such, so yeah... :'B

The art programs i use are Photoshop CS4 and Easy Paint Tool SAI (i mostly use SAI to draw and Photoshop to edit, animate or use other enhancing tools). I dunno if that makes any difference.