So I just saw and purchased the newest version of wacom’s Intuos tablet line: the Intuos4. What’s different, you ask?
Well, the main thing that caught my eye was the OLED displays (more on OLED’s here) next to the eight customizable buttons. Now, you don’t have to worry about being rusty on a program and forgetting what buttons you’ve assigned to do what—you can just look. They are illuminated, too, which means “dark vision.”
The other thing that you might notice is that the touchstrips have been replaced with a “touch wheel,” having a button in the center. This button, for example in Photoshop, can perform one of four tasks: resize canvas, adjust brush size, rotate canvas, and cycle layers. A fifth setting “brings up a customizable panel for prompting other applications, like email, web browser, music or whatever you’d like. ” – CGSociety.org. One thing that I like is that the design is, well . . . beautiful! It looks awesome and facilitates left and right handed users with the buttons on one side. I like this for two reasons: 1) I don’t have to fumble with my drawing hand to find and hit the right keys, and 2) when drawing in the top right corner, my hand won’t accidentally rest on the touchstrip and do something funny, depending on what program I’m in. In Photoshop, I got to a point where I just disabled the righthand strip. Now, there are no worries.
This version will still come with a five button mouse—albeit “updated”—for those who like to have a mouse, as well as the pen.
One thing that I found surprising is that gone is the “regular” vs “wide” scenerio, or in other words, looking at “do I want the 6×8, or 6×11 version.” Now, they are ALL wide format and the choices are “small, medium, large, or extra-large”. I picked up the equivalent of my old 6×8 Intuos3—the “Medium” version. The total drawing space is roughly the same, with the height being trimmed. The dimensions given were: 8.8″ x 5.5″. Note that this is not either the 6×8 or 6×11 size formats; kinda wierd. Don’t know how I feel about that, yet. I’ll let you know when I get it in my hands.
And the final thing to note is that the pressure sensitivity has raised to 2048 points of pressure sensitivity. Oh, and the cord now unplugs at the tablet level, so that you can switch from either the left or right sides to plug into.
Once mine arrives, I will have a further review for you.

P.S. To find out what the professionals are saying, you may want to read the CGSociety article.