Wacom’s cheapest tablet now supports Chromebooks for budding artists on a budget

With millions of students now attending school from their homes, affordable alternatives to laptops like the Chromebook are more popular than ever. With the lower price comes some tradeoffs including limited support for some software and hardware, but artists on a budget can now use a Wacom tablet with their Chromebooks to develop their burgeoning artistic skills.

As noted on Wacom website, while the basic functionality of some of the company’s older pen drawing tablets may work on some versions of Chrome OS, more advanced features such as pen pressure sensitivity and use of hotkeys. a Wacom tablet will not work reliably on a Chromebook. But that could change soon because today Wacom officially announced that its One by Wacom tablet is the company’s first fully Chromebook-compatible device and has received official Works With Chromebook certification.

Since so many young students trust Chromebooks, One by Wacom—Which is the company’s most affordable drawing tablet with a $ 60 price tag—Will be natively supported on the latest version of Chrome OS, which means no drivers need to be installed and no Wacom software to install and update regularly. The tablet can simply be plugged into a USB port and used as a more accurate alternative to a mouse for drawing and image editing, although Wacom’s One only supports basic stylus functionality, including sensitivity to pressure. More advanced features such as tilt detection or programmable shortcut buttons are only available on more expensive Wacom models.

Artists and designers who need more advanced features and functionality in their tablets usually also tend to rely on software from companies like Adobe and Autodesk, which currently only support operating systems like than Windows or Mac OS and machines with enough RAM and processing power to handle graphics intensive workloads. although there are versions of both Adobe Autodesk Photoshop and Sketchbook Pro available via Android on Chrome OS. Wacom also has confirmed to Gizmodo that all of the company’s tablets and pen displays will receive Chromebook certification. Support for One by Wacom will be followed by support for Chrome OS for Wacom’s other tablet lines, including Intuos, Intuos Pro, Wacom One, Cintiq, and Cintiq Pro.

Getting into digital art may just have had a little more affordable.