The large, beautiful Wacom One creative pen screen is compatible with your Chromebook

A couple of years ago when I wrote up the One by Wacom as the first ChromeOS-compatible graphics tablet for students and creatives, the larger, more impressive Wacom One wasn’t functional with Chromebooks. I was quite distraught since I had one but realized that at some point in the future this would change.

Not having been told about this, and somehow stumbling across it on their website, I discovered that this has finally happened. On the official Wacom One product page, a notice about halfway down shows that the 13.3-inch display was tested and confirmed directly by Wacom itself as compatible with Chromebooks!

While I call it a screen, don’t for one second think this is another screen. Wacom graphics tablets allow direct pen input so you can draw, sketch, paint or create in a more tangible way than a mouse allows. If you’re an aspiring artist, designer, or even 3D modeler, you’ll want to use a graphics tablet over other peripherals every day of the week.

As you can see below (sorry for the poor picture quality), I’ve connected the Pixelbook Go to the Wacom One, and although it acts as a second screen, the stylus that comes with it makes me feel like I’m drawing on paper. There is noticeable nib resistance and the tablet doesn’t detect my palm at all. This is something you simply can’t get by drawing directly on your Chromebook, as it feels like glass (because it is) and palm rejection is notoriously rubbish, despite Google’s neural updates meant to intelligently detect and reject your hand your.

This marks an important transition for artistic tools on Chromebooks. Until the One by Wacom and now the Wacom One (yes, they have similar names), you were left to buy a device with a built-in stylus and hope the apps and screen were good enough to knock out some decent drawings. Now you can feel like you’re in the big leagues and have a sense of professionalism without having to buy a Windows PC.

Many of the apps available to you, such as ArtFlow Studios, Autodesk Sketchbook, and even Concepts will work much better this way than if you were to use them on the Chromebook screen for the aforementioned reasons. While we don’t yet have full, real-deal Adobe Photoshop on ChromeOS and the web-based version we’ve covered lately probably won’t have pressure sensitivity available, there are still plenty of ways to unlock your creativity, and the Wacom One does more effortless than ever.

The Wacom One is currently $100 off, and while it will set you back $299 USD, it’s worth every penny if you’re like me and art is a big part of your life. If you’re just messing around, prefer not to set up the HDMI to Type-C adapter and power cable to the wall to drive this lovely pen display and just casually draw to express yourself, then I recommend picking up the much cheaper, more portable One by Wacom, so you can throw it in your laptop bag and hit the road prepared.

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