You may remember our post last month about a cheaper Cintiq alternative… Well, here’s an interesting bit of news out of South Africa. Apparently a new company called Bosto is manufacturing an alternative to a Wacom Cintiq.  It’s about time someone else started making  a low cost alternative!
Thanks to Jez Tuya for pointing out a video review of the device!
Updated! This from Bosto: We are now shipping the 14WA (14″), 19MA and 19MB (both 19″) from our store and also on eBay. Bosto.co
Any tests done with Photoshop, Toon Boom, and/or TV Paint? Sometimes the non-Cintiqs don’t work with the pressure sensitivity with certain software.
I actually just received mine the other day, I’m loving it so far, I use cintiq’s at work and as far as photoshop is concerned it feels no different. A couple things that in my opinion are very awesome, 1 they include EVERY method to hook it up (hdmi, vga, hdmi to dvi covert) 2 the thing doesn’t weigh any more then a standard monitor so if you make it flat you can easily put it on your lap to draw (which the cintiq is too heavy to do that) an it also doesn’t get hot at all (which cintiqs kick out ALOT of heat when they’re on for a while.)I still have to try it with zbrush and other programs ( I haven’t tried with toon boom yet as this computer doesn’t have it installed, however my work computers do so I can test it on there when I bring it in for my co workers to check out.) For the price you can’t go wrong and bosto’s customer service has been top notch, I had some issues with drivers when I first got is as I downloaded the wrong one, and after I posted on the forum one of the people who work at bosto contacted me and helped me resolve the issue. They also seem to be very receptive to feed back. I’m VERY impressed with the unit..
That’s great news! Let us know if you find out any more about the Toonboom thing. That’s a deal breaker in my world.
Completely understandable at my office we still use animo lol, we were going to move over to toon boom on one of our last projects but time constraints put the kibosh on it.
Yeah, the Yiynova model does not work with Toon boom. Theres a fix to it but its a pretty ghetto method. Also, they’re working on a driver fix for it at the moment. We’ll see!
what is the fix? can you post a detail description?
Thanks for drawing attention to our Bosto Kingtee Pen Displays!
We are now shipping the 14WA (14″), 19MA and 19MB (both 19″) from our store (payment in USD) and also on eBay.
Please would you kindly update the links in your article:
Bosto Southern Africa – http://www.bosto.co
eBay – http://www.ebay.com/sch/trixbrixsa/m.html?item=221191634657&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2562
Done! Let me know if you want to advertise! 🙂
Brilliant, thanks Mike!
Yes, we are interested in advertising.
In your “Updated! This from Bosto:” it would be great if you could link the links 🙂
Hi Jeff! Linked the links…Sorry I did that on my iPad and apparently that doesn’t work so well. That’s great about the advertising… you can contact me directly at mike@animationinsider.com
Can anyone confirm if these are required to be the primary monitor, or will they work as a secondary monitor as a Cintiq would?
you can however currently switching between monitors isn’t the easiest.. I’ve brought this concern up to them and I think they are looking into it/ addressing it .. I think there is a way to do it however I haven’t figured it out yet.. currently I downloaded a couple things to make it easier. I mapped a hotkey to switch all display windows, and downloaded a thing so i have my task bar on both menus which makes things much easier. if you can figure a way so assign a hot key to change display order that would work better and you could map that to one of the quick keys on the MA
*** Bosto Open Source Mac Driver Released ***
Thanks to the Bosto Community the first Mac driver (19MB) was released yesterday.
Download from http://www.bosto.co/support/file-download
I used to have a Wacom tablet, mainly used for cutting out images for découpage, to send to my die cutter. However when I bought my Livescribe Echo I discovered there was an app for it called ‘Tablet’ which would enable me to use ordinary paper (printed with special dots, but which I could print easily from any one of my printers) as the tablet and the Livescribe Echo as the stylus. This gave a much more ‘normal pen’ experience and has enabled me greater control to trace the lines of images etc. The app was very cheap, and I sold my Wacom tablet for nearly as much as I’d bought it in the first place – and I also gained some much-needed space in my office.
I presently own a 12.5 fujitsu lifebook pc tablet and I am wondering if it would be compatible with the bosto as it is like a bosto but much smaller and portable.I am looking into getting something that would give me a much larger screen then what I already have.If you have any suggestions that would be greatly appreciated.
It has been my experience since reviewing the Bosto devices, that they are WAY too unstable to use in a daily environment. I got mine to work with my wife’s laptop, bu tit wouldn’t work with any desktop I tried, including my friend’s both Mac AND Pc. I would instead suggest this: http://www.animationinsider.com/2014/06/cintiq-killer-the-thinkvision-lt1423p/
hey just stumbled onto this page & seen the vid on the bosto. anyone know if it can be used with manga studio 5? (not sure how these cintiq style tablets work lol) i currently use a wacom bamboo create for my webcomic but considering getting something new
It’s been my experience they do not work very well in hindsight. There are other tablets that are far better such as YiyiNova and Ugee.