I think we speak for all of us, when we say that we still very much enjoy handwriting notes, task lists, and random thoughts. But managing tons of different notes can be a nuisance. You can get lost in all your ideas. Not to mention that if you’d like to share something with clients, teammates, or friends, a photo of your notepad is simply unacceptable. Something needed to change. And so it did.

The concept on the Bamboo Slate is simple: if you’re a big fan of taking notes with pen-on-paper, while throwing a sketch or diagram here and there, this tablet will make sure they are saved for eternity as a digital footprint in a cloud. Better yet, your handwriting can be converted in editable rich text with just one click. 

Pen-to-paper digital capturing tools like the Bamboo Slate have existed for quite some time now, but they still feel like magic. There should be no way that you can draw something on regular paper, press a button, and its identical digital twin comes to life on your device! But with the Bamboo Slate, you can do exactly that.

Pen or stylus

Pen, with a stylus feel? That’s the best way we can describe it.

The Wacom Pen looks like a regular ballpoint pen, but it’s anything but ordinary. The pen itself has 1,024 levels of pressure. If you press the pen harder on the paper, the line will appear thicker. The slate follows where the pen goes, but also the amount of pressure applied to it.

It’s simple and elegant, with a matte black finish which makes for a pleasant grip. You need to use their special ink cartridges because that’s how the magic happens.

Plus, it writes so easily. You can very well imagine yourself at a trade event, a product presentation or an art exhibition, writing while standing without there being a disconnect between the analog and the digital.

The Inkspace app

You can very easily connect your Bamboo Slate to your phone or tablet with the help of their Inkspace app. This connection ensures that wherever the pen goes, the Slate will follow.

Inkspace will sync your handwriting and drawings to reuse and share. But it will also let you edit them. You can export files in .JPG, .PNG, .PDF, and .WILL (Wacom Ink Layer Language) directly to the Wacom cloud plus any other cloud of your choice like Dropbox, Evernote or, our favorite, iCloud.

The extra perks

Yes, it does come with a delightful 5 GB of free cloud storage which is enough to sync around 6,000 pages of notes and doodles across devices. Enough for the regular Joe.

But if you consider yourself a power user, you can pay a little extra for 50 GB of storage. If that does not scream power user, I don’t know what does. Along with other perks like converting your handwriting to rich text, better search features, and an export feature from your drawings into SVG vector files. 

Hello! That’s where a vector-based tool like Vectornator comes into the final act to steal the spotlight.

Vectornator integration

With Vectornator, your drawings, notes, and illustrations on paper can now be fully converted into accurate, high-quality vectors on your canvas. A dream come true?

This is the perfect way to sketch ideas for a logo, the start of an illustration, even backgrounds for your digital art, or the beginning of a brand new font you always imagined creating.

You can pair your Bamboo Slate to Vectornator, so anything you trace on paper is transferred automatically to your artboard. From there, you can freely transform and colorize your strokes and finalize your design.

Pairing is easy.

This pairing allows you to turn your paper drawings into vectors simultaneously or import them afterwards.

There are a few steps to connect your Bamboo Slate tablet to Vectornator:

1. Tap on the Wacom Slate option in the Input tab.
2. Turn on your Slate and then find the Next button.
3. Hold the Next button for six seconds to enter the pairing mode.
4. Once the status turns to “Connecting”, tap the button again on the Slate.
5. A new screen will appear, which shows the Battery Level of your Slate and allows you the option to disconnect the two devices.
6. You're connected! Time to start editing your vectors!

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