Dear Wacom, you suck. -Major (Or How to get your Wacom Tablet to work 100% of the time)

 

It sure does.

     I own a Wacom One tablet, like the picture above shows. My wife bought it for my son who is an aspiring graphic designer, and after a setup fraught with errors and outright lies, he decided he was better with a keyboard and mouse and it ended up on my desk. I use it for a small monitor on a stand for Discord, but it has a matte finish, so I'm going to buy a small narrow monitor to replace it, and it will go on my wife's desk soon. Overall it's responsive, the pen is nice, but has an almost blurry image even at its native 1080p.

Exhibit A - My current desk as it stands today, tablet- stage right.

Let me give you a break down of setup as defined by the instruction manual:

1. Plug it in to the PC VIA usb and hdmi
2. Plug in the USB power supply into anything
3. Download Wacom software and enjoy!

Actual Setup of the Wacom Tablet (Any product):

1. Turn off the computer.
2. Plug the Wacom tablet into a HDMI to Display Port adapter
3. Plug in your first (and second monitors if you have more that one) into the PC without the tablet connected via hdmi/display port adapter and start the PC
4. Download the Wacom software
5. Plug USB from the dongle in the back into the PC, from the same dongle that the HDMI is coming out of
6. Plug the other USB from the main cable before the dongle into a 2 amp or better USB phone charger USB socket, not into the PC or anything under 2 amps
7. Make sure USB cable is straightened with no kinks, this is important
8. Once Wacom software is installed, plug USB C dongle end into the Wacom tablet, but ONLY FACING TO THE LEFT. This is very important, and cannot be skipped.
9. Shutdown the PC, do not restart. Only shut down.
10. Power back on. 
11. Screen of Wacom will be black, but the PC seems to recognize another monitor connected, this is fine. You may lose your desktop as the blacked out screen of the Wacom is now your main monitor.
12. Unplug the Wacom table from the dongle only, still making right it faces to the left, and plug it back in.
13. The screen should come on as a third monitor, but will now be your main monitor and labeled as your #1 monitor, so change that in display settings.
14. Enjoy!

     The above directions are not an exaggeration in the slightest, just google potential issues and see what comes up on reddit. Hundreds of threads all trying to diagnose the same issues but nothing will work. The HDMI to Displayport adapter seems to be the only way I can get the tablet to work 100% of the time. If you use the HDMI with the steps above, it will periodically work, or you may have to install the software again and keep trying. The USB type C dongle, typically can be plugged in any direction or way and it works the same, but this port is not actually a USB Type C port, it's just shaped and acts as one, and only when the cable that comes off the elbow is pointing to the left. This is not some bullshit I'm making up here, check out the threads for yourself.

TLDR; Wacom makes a product that is good to use, but is comically bad to setup.