The professional-grade Wacom Cintiq 22HD ($1,999 direct) carries on the company's tradition of offering the best PC- and Mac-based drawing surfaces on the planet. It's ideal for professional illustrators, cartoonists, graphic designers, and artists who prefer to sketch directly on the screen, instead of drawing on a gray tablet and having to look at a separate display while working. The Cintiq 22HD replaces the now-discontinued Cintiq 21UX as our Editors' Choice for interactive pen displays, thanks in part to the 22HD's improved LED-backlit display and wide-aspect ratio, but mainly because there's still nothing quite like a Wacom Cintiq display.

Product Lineup and Design

First, a word about where the Cintiq 22HD sits in Wacom's lineup. The higher-end Cintiq 24HD touch ($3,699 direct), aside from being two inches larger, also supports multi-touch, to allow for two-handed work with virtual paints, markers, and clay for 3D sculpting, modeling, and animation. With that display, you could zoom in or rotate a 3D model with one hand while sculpting or sketching with the other. It also has a counter-weighted stand for positioning over the edge of a desk or like an easel, and you can even pop up an on-screen keyboard for typing if needed. Meanwhile, lower-end Wacom tablets like the excellent Intuos5  and budget-priced Bamboo Splash  cater to midrange professionals and amateur illustrators alike, with much lower price points, though none of those double as an actual display.

The Cintiq 22HD measures 15.7 by 25.6 by 2.2 inches (HWD) and weighs 18.7 pounds with the stand attached. It's huge—it's much larger than the average 22-inch monitor, thanks to an oversize bezel and various hardware controls. That said, it's actually several pounds lighter than the Cintiq 21UX; credit improvements in LCD and touch screen technology. The thick display bezel is encased in a soft touch material that makes the tablet easy to work with, particularly the tapered edge along the bottom. On the back, you get hardwired DVI-H and USB cables, and there's also a DisplayPort connector that makes it easy to hook up recent Macs. The Cintiq 22HD also works as a mirrored or extended display in conjunction with an additional monitor.

Metal Stand, Software Bundle, and Setup

Attaching the included metal stand only takes a few minutes, but you need to pay attention to the instructions—otherwise you could literally injure yourself with the release levers. Two Philips-head screws attach the stand to the back of the 22HD display panel. Once connected, you can position the Wacom Cintiq 22HD anywhere along a vertically tilting axis, from almost flush with the table, to standing almost straight up like an easel. The adjustments are smooth, tight, and accurate; the right lever controls upward movement, while the left lever controls downward movement; one locks while you move the other.

Aside from the main display and the metal stand, the package includes the Grip Pen and a small weighted pen stand (more on these two later). There's also a large AC adapter and power cord, plus two screws for the stand, several short printed manuals, and an installation DVD. The DVD only includes the driver software and PDF manual. In lieu of the separate software DVD Wacom included with the 21UX, Wacom now offers a great starting page linking to free software downloads that come with the Cintiq 22HD, as well as a series of tutorial videos to get you started. You get full versions of Adobe Photoshop Elements 10, Autodesk Sketchbook Express, Nik Software Color Efex Pro 4 Select Edition, and Smith Micro Anime Studio, and there's a 90-day trial for Corel Painter 12.

You'll need either a Windows 7, Vista, or XP SP2 PC, or a Mac running OS X 10.4.8 or later in order to get started. I tested the Wacom Cintiq 22HD with a quad-core Xeon-based Mac Pro running OS X 10.7.5 Lion and Adobe Photoshop CS6. I installed the bundled CD, which downloaded the full user manual from Wacom's website. As prompted, I configured the tablet for right-handed use and connected the USB cable to the back of the Mac Pro. Next, I plugged in the unit's AC power adapter and connected it to the Mac as the main display. I also calibrated the display and started up Adobe Photoshop CS6. Voilà—I was in business.