4 ms·

The leading brand is quite expensive (at least here in Germany), especially when it comes to reasonable sizes (A4/letter). I've been putting this off for years.

by mbeex 6y ago

The leading brand is quite expensive (at least here in Germany), especially when it comes to reasonable sizes (A4/letter). I've been putting this off for years. Finally - a few months ago - I aquired something remarkable cheaper, a chinese Gaomon M106K. It turned out, it is not cheap at all in the other sense of the word. Good quality and support at least for my use case (a bit different, handwritten formulas and sometimes some sketched diagrams). But my youngest kids use it for painting with Krita too.

illuminated 6y ago
I got lucky years ago running into sales for a bluetooth version of the Wacom tablet (540WL) and the wireless option does somehow "sets you free" while drawing... But they are expensive, yes.
omnimus 6y ago
Nobody wants A4 tablet trust me its not worth it. Ive seen so many pros replace them with A5 or even A6 because its better and more convinient. On the other hand any other brand than the leading brand is truly terrible.
- mkl 6y ago
  I do! This doesn't make sense to me. I have a Galaxy Note 12.2, and it's great, but bigger would be better (it's not quite A4). I also have a 12"×9" Wacom Intuos, 12" Surface Pro, 15" Surface Book 2 from work. All of those would be even better bigger (but the work laptop wouldn't fit in my backpack any more). I have a small Wacom tablet too, and it's too small to be very useful.
  - omnimus 6y ago
    Touchscreens and Tablets are something very different. Sure you want as big screen as possible. I bet most people who switch to touchscreens never want tablet back. Many people prefer tablets over touchscreens because you don't have to slouch.
    - sitkack 6y ago
      I would be interested in seeing videos of how people draw with tablets and touchscreens. Esp drawing with a small A6 tablet.
    - egypturnash 6y ago
      Yeah, I am a pro artist and I have played with screen tablets and I do not like the way they make me hunch over my work surface and ruin my back, I really like that I can have my screen at the proper height above my desk and my tablet at the most comfortable place on my desk. No slouching, no achy spine, no ending up with nose prints on the screen because I hunch closer instead of using the zoom capabilities.
    - m4rtink 6y ago
      Devices like the Galaxy Tab S6 are basically a very powerful Android tablet with low latency high precision pen input (also does pressure and tilt detectio) via the supplied S pen (uses basically the same battery free technology as Wacom tablets).
    - mkl 6y ago
      As I mentioned, I have two graphics tablets (i.e. without screens), both Wacom, one large and one small. The small one is not very useful, and the larger one (~A4 drawing area) would be even more useful a bit bigger.
- mbeex 6y ago
  > Nobody wants A4 tablet trust me its not worth it. Why should I do so when I have my own experience? > On the other hand any other brand than the leading brand is truly terrible. So you've tried them all? Not to talk about the use cases...
  - omnimus 6y ago
    True i havent tried them all. Ocassionaly somebody around has some wierd brand and it has never been really good. But it might just be certain feeling wacoms have that is something acquired and might not mean it's better.
    - jowsie 6y ago
      It's possibly it's something the Wacom drivers is doing (smoothing, etc). There's a game called osu! where lots of people play with graphics tablets, and a lot of people use cheaper chinese (Gaomon) tablets, with open source drivers that let you emulate the smoothing of Wacom drivers. https://github.com/hawku/TabletDriver https://github.com/hawku/TabletDriver
      - omnimus 6y ago
        Super interesting never heard of this. I thought its software because hardware could be copied. Also the big difference are usually other things than movement/pointing its pressure and tilt where Wacom is pretty great.
- weego 6y ago
  Actual pros replace them with cintiq or similar and are always larger than A4. I've never seen a full time designer move down size, because you lose fidelity at the same zoom level and are constantly fiddling with zoom which is a source of major frustration
  - omnimus 6y ago
    Of course you want cintiq as big as possible but not tablet. With A4 you get to a point where you have to move a lot around the table with hand in front of you while you are looking straight at your screen its just akward. You dont have space for keyboard etc.
    - bsanr2 6y ago
      I can corroborate this. A full size tablet is not always ideal. Display tablets like Cintiqs benefit from larger size because you are drawing 1:1 on a screen. The size allows for comfortable viewing as well as full arm movements on a surface that resembles a drafting table. However, traditional graphics tablets require you to draw on a separate surface while looking up at a monitor. The screen is mapped to the tablet surface, so to move the 10 inches on a 27" monitor to reach a button, you might instead only move your pen tip 1 or 2 inches. In this case, it's often easier to draw using small movements, and zoom in and out as required to work on structure or detail. Using a large tablet is like using a mouse with the sensitivity turned down. It quickly becomes frustrating having to move your arm around so much to manage the interface, especially when you don't have a direct connection between what you're looking at and touching. The difference is why someone might use a steno pad or moleskin journal rather than a full-size legal pad.
    - mattkevan 6y ago
      An illustrator friend bought an A3 Wacom years ago. It was so big that if you put legs on it it’d be a reasonable sized desk by itself. He ended up changing the mapping to only use a small portion near the front as he could barely reach the back.
      - 6y ago
mackrevinack 6y ago
what kind of price are we taking about? because a second hand surface pro 3 is probably cheap these days and could be used for a lot more than a wacom tablet, playing music, watching videos etc
- StavrosK 6y ago
  $50.
  - mbeex 6y ago
    Not for a Wacom with form factor >= A4. These have easily a price tag in the higher three-digit Euro range (and even more). Things like the A5 (!) Bamboo slate _start_ at 100 EU. @parent Of course - I also switched for ebooks from a dedicated reader to a tablet. But I'm still missing the ability for reading in the full sun, power for two weeks w/o charging, easiness on the eyes. Similar - but harder to tolerate - things apply to a painting tablet. You cannot replace it simply by a multi-function device without losing quite a lot functionality.
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      I was talking about the GAOMON the GP mentioned.
Moru 6y ago
The huion tablets are just as good if not better than wacom.
- vczf 6y ago
  That's what I thought as well, but my experience contradicts that. Wacom is expensive, but it still leads in terms of sensitivity and accuracy. The pressure levels and other specs don't tell the full story. On both my iPad Pro (2017) and an open-box Huion H610 Pro (pretty old) I saw stairstepping behavior when drawing a straight line with a ruler on a diagonal. It wasn't very pronounced on the iPad, but it was still there. If you draw the stroke quickly, the smoothing kicks in and straightens it. I'm pretty sure this is a normal side effect of the tech used to identify the grid coordinate of the stylus. But the wobbling was notably bad on the Huion. https://imgur.com/a/iPNZzrY https://imgur.com/a/iPNZzrY When I got a Wacom Intuos Pro PTH660 (Amazon renewed), the same test without smoothing showed a perfectly straight line, even when drawing quite slowly. I don't know why the Wacom is better. Maybe it's got a higher resolution grid for detecting the pen location. Or maybe it's just got better tuned drivers. It's also much easier to freehand accurate lines and ellipses on the Wacom. You generally can't trust the reviews of Wacom alternatives on YouTube. As reported by Aaron Rutten, most of the companies are not looking for fair and unbiased reviews: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twy5Wo8m284&t=337 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twy5Wo8m284&t=337

by mbeex 6y ago

illuminated 6y ago

I got lucky years ago running into sales for a bluetooth version of the Wacom tablet (540WL) and the wireless option does somehow "sets you free" while drawing... But they are expensive, yes.

omnimus 6y ago

Nobody wants A4 tablet trust me its not worth it. Ive seen so many pros replace them with A5 or even A6 because its better and more convinient. On the other hand any other brand than the leading brand is truly terrible.

mkl 6y ago
I do! This doesn't make sense to me. I have a Galaxy Note 12.2, and it's great, but bigger would be better (it's not quite A4). I also have a 12"×9" Wacom Intuos, 12" Surface Pro, 15" Surface Book 2 from work. All of those would be even better bigger (but the work laptop wouldn't fit in my backpack any more). I have a small Wacom tablet too, and it's too small to be very useful.
- omnimus 6y ago
  Touchscreens and Tablets are something very different. Sure you want as big screen as possible. I bet most people who switch to touchscreens never want tablet back. Many people prefer tablets over touchscreens because you don't have to slouch.
  - sitkack 6y ago
    I would be interested in seeing videos of how people draw with tablets and touchscreens. Esp drawing with a small A6 tablet.
  - egypturnash 6y ago
    Yeah, I am a pro artist and I have played with screen tablets and I do not like the way they make me hunch over my work surface and ruin my back, I really like that I can have my screen at the proper height above my desk and my tablet at the most comfortable place on my desk. No slouching, no achy spine, no ending up with nose prints on the screen because I hunch closer instead of using the zoom capabilities.
  - m4rtink 6y ago
    Devices like the Galaxy Tab S6 are basically a very powerful Android tablet with low latency high precision pen input (also does pressure and tilt detectio) via the supplied S pen (uses basically the same battery free technology as Wacom tablets).
  - mkl 6y ago
    As I mentioned, I have two graphics tablets (i.e. without screens), both Wacom, one large and one small. The small one is not very useful, and the larger one (~A4 drawing area) would be even more useful a bit bigger.
mbeex 6y ago
> Nobody wants A4 tablet trust me its not worth it. Why should I do so when I have my own experience? > On the other hand any other brand than the leading brand is truly terrible. So you've tried them all? Not to talk about the use cases...
- omnimus 6y ago
  True i havent tried them all. Ocassionaly somebody around has some wierd brand and it has never been really good. But it might just be certain feeling wacoms have that is something acquired and might not mean it's better.
  - jowsie 6y ago
    It's possibly it's something the Wacom drivers is doing (smoothing, etc). There's a game called osu! where lots of people play with graphics tablets, and a lot of people use cheaper chinese (Gaomon) tablets, with open source drivers that let you emulate the smoothing of Wacom drivers. https://github.com/hawku/TabletDriver https://github.com/hawku/TabletDriver
    - omnimus 6y ago
      Super interesting never heard of this. I thought its software because hardware could be copied. Also the big difference are usually other things than movement/pointing its pressure and tilt where Wacom is pretty great.
weego 6y ago
Actual pros replace them with cintiq or similar and are always larger than A4. I've never seen a full time designer move down size, because you lose fidelity at the same zoom level and are constantly fiddling with zoom which is a source of major frustration
- omnimus 6y ago
  Of course you want cintiq as big as possible but not tablet. With A4 you get to a point where you have to move a lot around the table with hand in front of you while you are looking straight at your screen its just akward. You dont have space for keyboard etc.
  - bsanr2 6y ago
    I can corroborate this. A full size tablet is not always ideal. Display tablets like Cintiqs benefit from larger size because you are drawing 1:1 on a screen. The size allows for comfortable viewing as well as full arm movements on a surface that resembles a drafting table. However, traditional graphics tablets require you to draw on a separate surface while looking up at a monitor. The screen is mapped to the tablet surface, so to move the 10 inches on a 27" monitor to reach a button, you might instead only move your pen tip 1 or 2 inches. In this case, it's often easier to draw using small movements, and zoom in and out as required to work on structure or detail. Using a large tablet is like using a mouse with the sensitivity turned down. It quickly becomes frustrating having to move your arm around so much to manage the interface, especially when you don't have a direct connection between what you're looking at and touching. The difference is why someone might use a steno pad or moleskin journal rather than a full-size legal pad.
  - mattkevan 6y ago
    An illustrator friend bought an A3 Wacom years ago. It was so big that if you put legs on it it’d be a reasonable sized desk by itself. He ended up changing the mapping to only use a small portion near the front as he could barely reach the back.
    - 6y ago

mackrevinack 6y ago

what kind of price are we taking about? because a second hand surface pro 3 is probably cheap these days and could be used for a lot more than a wacom tablet, playing music, watching videos etc

StavrosK 6y ago
$50.
- mbeex 6y ago
  Not for a Wacom with form factor >= A4. These have easily a price tag in the higher three-digit Euro range (and even more). Things like the A5 (!) Bamboo slate _start_ at 100 EU. @parent Of course - I also switched for ebooks from a dedicated reader to a tablet. But I'm still missing the ability for reading in the full sun, power for two weeks w/o charging, easiness on the eyes. Similar - but harder to tolerate - things apply to a painting tablet. You cannot replace it simply by a multi-function device without losing quite a lot functionality.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    I was talking about the GAOMON the GP mentioned.

Moru 6y ago

The huion tablets are just as good if not better than wacom.

vczf 6y ago
That's what I thought as well, but my experience contradicts that. Wacom is expensive, but it still leads in terms of sensitivity and accuracy. The pressure levels and other specs don't tell the full story. On both my iPad Pro (2017) and an open-box Huion H610 Pro (pretty old) I saw stairstepping behavior when drawing a straight line with a ruler on a diagonal. It wasn't very pronounced on the iPad, but it was still there. If you draw the stroke quickly, the smoothing kicks in and straightens it. I'm pretty sure this is a normal side effect of the tech used to identify the grid coordinate of the stylus. But the wobbling was notably bad on the Huion. https://imgur.com/a/iPNZzrY https://imgur.com/a/iPNZzrY When I got a Wacom Intuos Pro PTH660 (Amazon renewed), the same test without smoothing showed a perfectly straight line, even when drawing quite slowly. I don't know why the Wacom is better. Maybe it's got a higher resolution grid for detecting the pen location. Or maybe it's just got better tuned drivers. It's also much easier to freehand accurate lines and ellipses on the Wacom. You generally can't trust the reviews of Wacom alternatives on YouTube. As reported by Aaron Rutten, most of the companies are not looking for fair and unbiased reviews: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twy5Wo8m284&t=337 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twy5Wo8m284&t=337