With the new Bamboo Splash drawing tablet ($79 direct), Wacom is taking a more sensible approach toward appealing to budding artists, amateur cartoonists, and students. Last year's Bamboo Connect ($79, 2.5 stars) is still available, and still costs the same as the . But the Splash is a better deal for most consumers, as it includes all the right software this time around—particularly ArtRage Studio. It's a great choice if you want to get started with drawing with a pen and seeing the results on screen, whether it's for virtual ink, paint, pencil lead, or charcoal.

Design, Package, and Setup
Let's start with the tablet itself, which is the same as the one in the Bamboo Connect  package. It's a black slab that measures 6.9 by 10.9 by 0.4 inches (HWD). It's pretty slim, with tapered edges and a neon green bottom panel and cloth loop for holding the pen. As before, the actual drawing surface measures 5.8 by 3.6 inches. It has a matte finish with a pleasant, tacky feel when used with the bundled Bamboo Pen. The detachable USB cord lets you reposition the tablet more easily.

Unfortunately, the bundled Bamboo Pen still lacks an eraser. This is a frustrating limitation, especially since Wacom Bamboo tablets at a similar price point a few years ago came with one; it's as if the marketing department decided to take it out as an incentive to upgrade to the larger $199 Bamboo Create. Unfortunately, the Bamboo Splash still doesn't work with Wacom's Wireless Accessory Kit ($39.95), which comes with a small battery, transmitter, and USB receiver—you need to move up to the Bamboo Capture ($99, 3.5 stars) for that option.

The package includes the Bamboo tablet and pen, a USB cable, three software CD-ROMs, and three spare pen tips. For this review, I tested the Bamboo Splash and included software on a Lenovo ThinkPad L420 Core i3-powered laptop with 8GB RAM and Windows 7 Service Pack 1 installed. Setup is simple: Boot your computer, install the Bamboo Splash driver CD, and follow the on-screen instructions. During the installation, you're asked if you want to configure the tablet for left or right-handed use (and you can change this later). Once you're done, then install ArtRage Studio and Autodesk Sketchbook Express manually.

Software, Performance, and Conclusions
So what's on the new CDs? ArtRage Studio is a painting program, and a pretty full featured one at that. Autodesk Sketchbook Express offers a variety of brushes, pencils, and pens, and is more suited for detailed pen and pencil work. The tablet and bundled software work on both Macs and PCs. With the main software installed, a small Bamboo dialog box opens on the desktop with a "Draw To Open" button. Aside from the lack of an eraser, the pen itself is great. It's pressure sensitive, wireless, and doesn't need a battery. Combined with the Bamboo tablet surface, it's sensitive to 1,024 levels of pressure.

ArtRage Studio (pictured, above) is where the action is. Drawing and painting with the Bamboo Splash feels much more natural and accurate than I expected. Press down harder, and you'll lay more paint on the "canvas" on screen. Switch to a different color, and you'll mix the two together as you paint, just as if the paint was wet in real life, and then bleeds out along the edge as you move to a clean area. Turning up the Metallic slider adds sparkle. Big rollers let you lay down huge swaths of paint, which even has the texture of a roller as you press more lightly.

Photo editors looking for an inexpensive tablet for editing should skip the Splash and move up to the Bamboo Capture , which comes with multi-touch control and a copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements. If you can afford it, it's worth it to step up either to the Bamboo Create for its larger surface and eraser, or better yet, to the midsize Wacom Intuos5 ($349, 4 stars), our current Editors' Choice for drawing tablets. The Intuos5  offers increased accuracy, programmable capacitive buttons, and special software hooks for drawing-specific features in Photoshop, Lightroom, and Maya. Otherwise, the Bamboo Stylus does exactly what it's supposed to do. And at $79, it's a tempting impulse buy. Now Wacom, how about putting the eraser back?