Hi everyone,

I'm planning to buy a graphics tablet, however I have never used one before..., so i don't really know what I should be looking for.
Can someone share some recommendations on Manufacturer/Model or special features?

My budget is about 100-200 Euro, I plan to use it with open source software mostly (blender, Paint.net), if this should be a limitation.

Don't know if this is important, but I could imagine it is: I'm left handed.

Thank you in advance.

Best Jochen

For 100-200 you should get a larger wacom bamboo or a smaller wacom intuos. I would recomment to get a intuos 4 to save some bucks and try to get a larger one, thought din a4 will be out of budget.

This is an interesting thing for me too. The brand is pretty much given (Wacom), We (gf and me) are not sure about the size. We have low budged, maybe even for an A5 sized tablet. Does anyone recommend a A6 for beginner, or it isn't worht to struggle with a tablet that small? We are more interested in skatching and animation, and not so interested in detailed artwork.

Sorry for highjacking.

Thank you for the input Ashaman!

I ordered a Wacom Intuos5 Touch M this afternoon. Little bit over my initial budget . But well, after looking into several reviews I thought it's the right one for me. I'll drop a note about how happy I am with my decision once i got used to it.

Best
Jochen

This is an interesting thing for me too. The brand is pretty much given (Wacom), We (gf and me) are not sure about the size. We have low budged, maybe even for an A5 sized tablet. Does anyone recommend a A6 for beginner, or it isn't worht to struggle with a tablet that small? We are more interested in skatching and animation, and not so interested in detailed artwork.

If you don't care about detail that much you might be fine going with an off brand. Most off brands are still very good today, even though they don't have the precision many require they can be a money saving alternative if you just want one to mess around with.

You can also look into refurbished stuff and get a decent discount.

What price did you pay? I am also looking for a gfx tablet since my bamboo isn't precise enough for my tastes. Basically at least a medium intuos. The cheapest intuos5 med I could find is the academic one for around 300 bucks.

What price did you pay? ...

I paid 357.89 Euro ordering at Amazon. You can get it a little cheaper if you look around the web for best prices.
However, I had an amazon gift voucher...

Best Jochen

I have a Wacom Bamboo and it works rather well for my needs

Don't get too hung up on size, I've been using a 6x8 Intuos2 for years, and it's great for all the work I've ever wanted to do. Most graphics packages let you zoom in anyway, so you get as much fine detail as you want. Another thing to keep in mind, the full tablet is a lot larger than the draw area: the 6x8 takes up as much room on the desk as my entire 15" laptop. The bigger sizes must be prohibitively large unless you have the dedicated space for them.

Right/Left-handedness shouldn't play a factor, the wacom stylus is symmetrical and so are the tablet controls, with everything being programmable.

How hard is it to get used to drawing on the pad while looking at the screen?
Since the pad itself doesn't display any graphics (Unless I'm mistaken here?), if you lift up the pen and want to put it back down again to continue drawing, how do you know where to put it back down? This always confused me about these pads.