TIGSource Forums

Okay. I'm going to buy a tablet for my computer. I want to stay around or under $150. Any suggestions?

I suggest adding a another zero to your base budget at minimum.

Nah, man, get a Wacom Bamboo. I have one and it's great.

It's also cheap.

I'm stupid.  I was thinking a tablet PC.  Ignore me and listen to the smart Corpus man.

echoing the bamboo as a great piece of hardware for the price.

The bamboo is cool as a first/cheap tablet for sure.

If you get serious about digital paining though, you'll start to want a better one.

Alrighty. I think I'm going to go with a Bamboo Fun. (Though I would like an Intuos, that's out of my price range)

I have a Bamboo One. I'd reccomend that.

I also have a bamboo, though I'm thining of buying a better one eventually. I could use some better resolution, and tilt.

I've had the same, tiny Graphire tablet for the past four or five years and I love it to death.  Still works great.  Got it on sale at Staples for 50 or 60 bucks.  The drawing area on it is only about 5" x 4", but honestly I'm not even sure I'd like a larger one.  It seems like anything bigger would just be cumbersome. 

Tilt and rotate would be nice though.

Got a tiny Wacom as well. Had it for a while, like it a lot.

My main advice is to stick with Wacom. I bought this (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823102012) piece of crap, figuring it couldn't be that bad with such a large drawing area. Turns out it only picks up the pen when it's pressed to the pad (not hovering, like on a Wacom), has a large array of on-tablet macro buttons that only work occasionally, and is packaged with barebones drivers lacking seemingly standard stuff like dual-monitor support.

I sent it back for a refund and now realize my little Graphire is about all I need.

Bigger is nice because it lets you draw properly (IE using your arm) more, but 6x9 is plenty to work with. Also, I have not found tilt sensitivity to be nearly as useful as I'd hoped. If anyone's figured out a useful way to map that parameter in PShop or Painter I'd like to hear it.

http://www.hantech.ca/product/product_detail.asp?M=&S=3&bCateName=TABLO&CATEID=00030001

I had to import mine from Canada. Should be arriving in a few days. I'll tell you what I think.

Me, too- I do pretty much all of my art on my tablet now. Like my avatar, for example. You can get a Bamboo in some places for about 80 bucks, so you should be good to go. Just make sure that you install the drivers first if you're on Windows- otherwise, the auto-install can cause some weird issues, like not being able to pick up pressure sensitivity after a certain amount of time.

I got a the cheapest piece of crap there was, a few years ago. It scared me from ever thinking about getting a tablet again... Maybe I should.

Do you think I should get a Bamboo Medium, or a Intous4 Small? Their roughly at the same price.
Are 6.2 x 3.9 inches of work-area enough?

Thanks for teh input all! I've decided to go with a small Bamboo Fun

Good choice, I have the medium one and I'm very pleased.

Tablet PCs suck.  Don't waste your money on them.

Hater, I've tried one, and certainly not one of the best. And I can't say more than that I loved it.

I've used one for the past two-and-a-half years.  They're not designed to last, they overheat really bad when in tablet mode, the screens are regular laptop screens and aren't very good for good color balance, they use the lowest Wacom tech (256 levels of pressure, runs of the same hardware as my decade-old serial port tablet except without tilt sensitivity), and for their price, you're always better off buying a Cintiq.

For the price I spent on my tablet, I could have gotten the smaller Cintiq, which has a bigger, better screen, and a decent laptop that I could later upgrade without having to pay extra to replace a built-in tablet.

It is true they're not worth the money. But the technology is good, and it is at least something to advance in.

But I'm pleased with my regular tablet to.

Any tablet PC I've ever used has failed to impress me, but I suppose that they just do it for some people and not for others.

I just carry around my Graphire with my laptop.

I love my Intuos so much I sometimes just use it instead of a mouse. I switched from a small Graphire 4 (which was stolen when my place got broken into) to one of the bigger Intuos tablets and I definitely notice the size difference. Having to draw with just your wrist tends to produce cramped drawings.

Yeah, I too have an intuos2 (a4) and i love it to pieces. I have used a cheap alternative (i.e. not a wacom) and whilst i can see it's uses for getting into digital art on a tight budget, it really was a world apart. I imagine the bamboo range would be somewhere between that piece of crap and the intuos, so is probably perfectly good for most people. Enjoy your tablet matey :)

Also re: tablet PCs. Have any of you who were hating on them used a cintiq before? I've always had an almost uncontrollable desire for one, but can't imagine it being worth that price. It is the coolest gadget though for when i eventually have spare cash.

I recently bought a Bamboo Fun for my brother, but it hasn't shipped yet. It'll be interesting to see his take on it, as more of a casual artist. It was plenty cheap enough, especially to apparently come with some form of Photoshop and Painter (I'm skeptical that they're going to be anywhere near full versions), so it was an easy gift.

I really, really liked my Bamboo for the first several months.
I especially liked using it with Painter X, but...

Painter X crashed on my at least once every work session.
Painter X gets really slow.
All the Painter X paint brushes are meant for really high-res work, but see the point above.  That point is exacerbated when working with high resolution canvasses.

Photoshop definitely seems like the best option out there, but the brush interface is nowhere near what Painter has.  Well, it might be, but I wasn't able to get anything I was satisfied with in my hours of playing around.

I was hoping to do most of my artwork digitally, but after having used my tablet for a while, I'd much rather do artwork in the physical then scan it in and do minor work on the PC.

As far as size goes, I was completely set on getting an Intuos 2 with a 6x9" workspace, but opted for the "tester" Bamboo 4x6" instead.  The smaller 'active' area is really not the issue you might think it is.  Often the active area seems too large at this small size.  Of course, you may have a different opinion if you're a more studious artist than me.  I'm really only part-time where I do a couple of projects a year.

I'd recommend the Intuos4 over Bamboo, I wont list features but you get a lot more of them for a similar price.  I'd try one out somewhere regardless of your choice to see which working area is more comfortable for you.  The smaller size wasn't a big deal for me.

I have a Bamboo as well as an Intuos3 A4 and I have to agree with Chris on how a small tablet causes cramped drawings.
I think a Bamboo or other cheap small tablets are good to play around and see what tablets are all about. But when doing a lot of work with it, I'm thankful to have a larger tablet.
Shouldn't the Intuos3 tablets should be cheaper now, considering that Wacom released a new iteration?

Also my Bamboo makes sounds...  :-\

Some time ago I tried the Cintiq 21UX for a while, but found the Intuos to be better. Tilting and direct visual feedback are nice, but I didn't enjoy how the mouse isn't always at the right position because the glass is kinda thick. You are also very close to the display. Besides that it gets warm(kinda distracting at times) and it takes a lot of your deskspace.

I use a conventional sketchbook.