Charging Issues with the Wacom Companion (1st Gen)

In my previous journal entry, I talked about how I purchased a Wacom Companion, which is still serving me well to this day. However, I did hit a rather crippling issue; the charging port is faulty.

This is apparently a very common issue with the 1st Gen Companions manufactured before July 2014. Wacom has officially recognized the issue and offers a free repair/replacement service and will even cover the shipping expenses both ways. The only requirement is that the unit still be within the warranty, to which they've extended by three years for the confirmed faulty units.

According to them, models manufactured after July of 2014 use different components for the charging port, and thus do not have this issue. What exactly is the issue? This fine fellow figured it out.



Simply put, the center pin isn't well soldered onto its base, and is easily wiggled loose from general usage. Once it's been loosened, charging the unit becomes finicky or altogether impossible. In the video, it is shown that if the pin is ever completely broken off, you may have a better chance of "saving" your unit by shoving the opposite end of the pin into the barrel and plugging it in that way to make better contact with the inner base.

While I think it's fantastic that Wacom is providing a free repair/replacement service for the affected units, the limited warranty (even when extended) leaves a lot of units irreparable, including mine.



As a temporary solution, I've looped a rubber band around the connector and the kickstand behind the Wacom. It provides enough tension that I get a stable charging connection, but now my "portable" Companion has been relegated to a desk-ridden overpriced tablet monitor.

Switching over to battery power does take a hit on performance, even if you have the on-battery power saving mode set to high-performance. In Clip Studio, it will periodically freeze or slow when I draw. That's unacceptable. The tablet must always be plugged in for when I work.

So, the tablet it still serving me, for sure, but it has become significantly less portable, at least in a convenient way. I can still move it around, but I don't want to risk inflicting any more damage to the port by moving or unplugging it. At this point, I am somewhat wishing I had purchased a regular Cintiq instead, since that's what my Companion is now, more or less.

I'm sure Wacom have learned their lesson here, and the newer models are more robust. But there are still plenty of these units out there, produced before Wacom got their ducks in a row, and are passed the extended warranty. Even when bought secondhand, we know these things are expensive as fuck, and from that we expect them to be reliable. People are basing their impression of Wacom off of these, and as a huge company, I would think they'd be damn sure to strengthen one of the most crucial components of any portable device.