Which Cintiq do you use, aevan? I have a 13" model, and I can relate to a lot of what she said. My Cintiq is far dimmer than any monitor I've ever had, and the colors are way off compared to, say, my Macbook's retina display. I often have to pull my illustrations or designs over to my Macbook to see how it looks. I happen to have a >6 year old monitor that I bought for about $80 (which looks pretty bad, as you might expect), and it's comparable to, if not slightly better than, the Cintiq display. I can also relate to her complaints about the gap between the screen and the glass being noticeable.
I know, I know...that comes across like an overwhelmingly negative review. And her post is even more scathing. I'm not a Cintiq hater – I do like some aspects of it. But I believe there's a considerable amount of room for improvement, and I'm hoping that Apple makes some headway in those areas.
I use the Cintiq Companion 2 tethered to an iMac. I used a small terminal hack to force the Companion into retina mode (scale the UI) as it's ppi is just like on a Retina Mac (a 2560x1440 on a 13" screen gives 220 ppi which is exactly the same as a Retina MacBook or iMac). So, it's a retina screen.
The colors are fine - of course, my iMac 5K screen simply looks better, no denying that. The colors on the Companion 2 are not bad, the accuracy is pretty decent and the screen looks quite nice to the eyes, even next to an iMac Retina. And it's great for work - I usually open a second window for the PSD I'm working on and put it on the iMac screen as well.
There are certain annoying things with the Cintiq, I'll give you that. Wacom just doesn't have the resources (yet) to do the nice laminated screen of an iPad so there is a gap between the screen and pen. Also, their drivers tend to be buggy from time to time (even though they have a bundle of pro options that allow for some really good workflows).
The reason her text is rubbish is the part where she says you can't control where the brush stroke ends on a Cintiq (of course you can, with a pixel-perfect precision, I'll explain a bit later) and where she has "all her express keys mapped to Undo - which is, quite frankly, ridiculous. The express keys are one of the best features of a Wacom tablet. But in them lies the difference - they are not "cool" and they require some muscle memory, but they quickly become indispensable when used correctly. Basically, she acts like a spoiled child. Even with her years of experience, she hasn't mastered her tools (I know a lot of people that simply have trouble with technology, and that is where Apple steps in and offers solutions that are never as powerful but always intuitive and 'magical'). As for the brush strokes, the Cintiqs use the 'hover' mode where you actually see the cursor on the screen, just as if you were using the mouse or an Intuos tablet. Every pro user knows you don't look at the TIP of the pen, you look at the cursor. With that in mind, the precision is - well - precise to a single pixel.
So here's the thing - the Cintiq is just not as "cool" as an iPad Pro with a Pencil which, I can only imagine, works like magic. Numerous great technologies that only Apple can pull off have been combined into a great tool. I'm planning on getting the iPad Pro as well - even if I only use it for quick sketches or notes, because I'm into technology. But I'm still not sold on it replacing a Photoshop + Cintiq/Intuos combo for the whole workflow. I'm almost certain you can sketch on it in a way that feels amazing - but whether you can produce a full digital work like you can in photoshop, remains to be seen. It all depends on Procreate (a huge fan, and currently the only art app worthy of getting for iOS) being able to produce work better or same as Photoshop with the same speed or ease. And the very fact that makes Cintiqs uncool and seem more "digital" and imprecise to casual users - the fact that you see the pointer - is what I think will still keep it as king for certain types of work. At least for now.
But I'm really excited about the Pencil and iPad Pro.
