Ask HN: Why are drawing tablets so expensive? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why are drawing tablets so expensive?

8 pointssigmaprimus16 comments

I had a Christmas present request for one and was shocked to see how expensive they are.

Is it just because it is a niche product? Or is there some sort of special hardware that makes them different from regular tablets? Do these tablets somehow make people draw better?

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FYI, lots of freelance and professional digital artists who draw for a living are using the $50-150 models which don't have displays to great success. I have one of those (old Wacom Bamboo Capture, no longer sold) and it's more natural than it sounds to make drawing motions with your hand that are rendered on your computer monitor.

Unless you have reason to believe the person who made the Christmas request expects a present with $300-$5000+ price tag or specifically wants one with a display, they're probably thinking about the screenless ones (especially if they don't already have a drawing tablet). In that case, they'll likely be very happy with any Wacom model - Wacom Intuos is currently the popular one.

As for the price and functionality - the really expensive ones are targeted towards full-time corporate professionals who sit in a room and churn out art all day, and their company will happily shell out $5k for top-tier equipment for them (the artist version of a Bloomberg Terminal haha). The $300-500 ones with screens are priced like regular tablets because that's kind of what they are, just specialized for drawing with a pen. The $50-150 ones focus on the pen input itself and don't deal with the complications of having a screen, making them simple tools that enable digital drawing (it's much more tedious to draw with a mouse than a pen). Their price is the baseline for this category of tooling, as even those basic tablets have a variety of features like pressure sensitivity, high precision, side buttons, etc. which mostly justify the price tag.

Your question is hard to answer if you don't give some examples of what you consider "expensive".

Drawing tablets are now cheaper and higher quality than they have ever been. A quick of Amazon shows an "Amazon's choice" of a 6.3x3.9" tablet for 34 USD. That's a bit on the small side, but very usable.

If you are looking at flagship professional-level Cintiqs, sure, they are expensive. But that's like looking at an Apple XDR display and complaining that monitors are so expensive. I'll add that display tablets have multiple drawbacks compared with non-display tablets - nothing major for the occasional user though.

I've been pretty happy with my Samsung Galaxy S3 with S-Pen as a cheapo alternative to a Wacom. Many people also swear by the iPad / Apple pencil combo, though that's a step up in price.

I've had a few of the non-screen Wacoms in the past, but could never get on with the 'drawing down there -- appearing up there' disconnect between tablet and computer screen, so I cot rid of them and adopted the Android tablet + stylus approach.

The advantages of using a tablet:

1: Small, portable, self-contained. The Wacom / Huion types need connected through a computer.

2: Some surprisingly good full-featured software available for ridiculously low prices [or free]

3: The Samsung Galaxy S-pen has 1024 pressure levels --just like the Wacom pens. So it's actually a very sensitive drawing instrument.

The disadvantages of using a tablet:

1: Small screen size. It can often feel pretty cramped on there. Good graphics apps will allow you to hide all the interface panels and menus, so you're using all the screen to draw. But a lot of the time, I'm having to zoom in and work on an image in sections.

2: Plenty of good bitmap image manipulation and drawing apps about, but I still can't find an Android vector drawing app I like.

3: Can be bit more of a faff passing files around between apps on Android than it is on desktop. Though, unlike iOS, at least Android does allow filesystem access, so you can manage it, with a bit of juggling [and using Google Drive as your save destination helps a lot].

I just got myself a Galaxy tablet and I was wondering about drawing apps. Nothing fancy, just to spend time away from coding. Do you have any recommendations?

You've come to the right person. I must have tried them all in my time. Here's a few that have stuck around:

Ibis Paint [0] -- [Free and paid versions]. Ignore the puke-making cutesy Manga gallery that greets you when you fire it up. It's actually a really full featured drawing app with layers / filters / masking / PSD export, etc. This is the one I use most

Autodesk Sketchbook [1] --[Free] Similarly full featured to Ibis Paint, but slightly less so. Text handling tools not as good. I used to use this a lot before I discovered Ibis Paint

Infinite Design [2] --[Free and paid] The most full featured Vector Drawing app I've found. There's a lot in there but it can be a bit clunky to use and theres a bit of lag when drawing, which puts me off using it much.

Concepts [3] --[Free and paid]. A real mixed bag this one. I find the pen tool one of the nicest and most expressive to draw with of any app I've tried. And the infinite canvas is good for just doodling and 'seeing where it takes you'.

Unfortunately, it's one of those apps where the designers have thrown usability guidelines out the window, to come up with an 'innovative' interface, which I personally find really annoying to use. It also gets a lot of flak for the slow pace of development on Android. The developers have been promising feature parity with the iOS version [which is apparently much better] for years now, but it never seems to arrive.

Photo Editor [4] -- [Free and paid] This is as close to a mini Photoshop as you can get on Android] as in an app for manipulating existing images, rather than drawing per se. The interface is a bit menu heavy and unintuitive at times. But there's a lot in there, if you do a bit of digging.

[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.ne.ibis.ibi...

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.adsk.sketc...

[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brakefield...

[3] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tophatch.c...

[4] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.iudesk.and...

I've got a load of other graphic and drawing apps installed. But those tend to be the ones which get the most usage. Your best bet is probably to do what I did; install a load of them and see how you get on, as everyone has a different style of working and a different idea of what constitutes a usable interface.

I found that, as with a lot of so-called "reviews" these days, most of the articles I searched for on topics like "XX Great Drawing Apps for Android", when I first got my tablet, were little more than rehashed press releases, outlining the features of various apps but giving no insight into their 'real world' usability.

Amazing, thanks for such detailed post!

Drawing tablets also have pen pressure and tilt detection to simulate a real paintbrush. They also need thicker screens to handle constant pen strokes whereas a regular tablet is mostly used by fingers.

Wacom and Huion are pretty much the only 2 manufacturers in this niche market. Huion's equivalents for Wacom tablets are usually much cheaper but their drivers are noticeably worse in my experience.

I think most if not all of the non-Wacom brands use UC-Logic digitizers. XP-Pen and GAOMON tablets should be pretty similar in price and capabilities to Huion-brand tablets.

I agree that drivers are definitely a big differentiator. Most of the non-Wacom tablets have OK support on Linux thanks to the DIGImend project but it may be a pain to customize things like frame buttons. Win/Mac you are stuck with whatever driver the manufacturer last made for your specific model.

I bought Wacom's tablet for $70 a few years ago. It seemed to work just fine, I just didn't use it as much as I thought I would. Not sure how a more expensive tablet would differ though.

Unless they want a specific model, you can all sort of prices on Amazon.

Interesting, I do see the tablets You are describing, they don't have a display. I was looking at the ones with a display, Amazon has a Wacom one with a 4K display for around $2500 USD, that's a lot of pencil crayons and paper! I think Santa might be bringing one of the ones without a display this year!!

iPad pro has a screen you can draw on, but in my opinion, a screen does not add much value. People can be intimidated by “not looking at the pen tip” but nobody thinks about the fact they already don’t look at their hand when using a mouse. After a little use, drawing while looking at the screen becomes just as natural as on paper, but I like it better since no pen or hand is blocking your view.

Just to add some more of my experience. Wacom tablet is awesome and really close to what it feels like drawing on a paper. And yes when drawing, you are looking at the monitor and don't really feel the need to look down. On my 13" 2016 MBP, there was no noticeable delay. The biggest drawback for me was that it is not as portable setup. You need a computer for it to work.

I switched to iPad and Procreate app because it was just easier to do random drawings while watching TV or in a coffee shop etc. But drawing on iPad doesn't feel like drawing on paper. I even got a screen protector that is supposed to add paper like feel but it is still not as good as Wacom tablet.

Thank You all for the information and advise.

Based in part on the price and your comments, I have decided to purchase a Wacom Intuos CTL4100. This model seems to be the most popular unit and comes with somewhat of a suite of Corel software available for download.

This will be a gift for a young budding artist. Thanks again to all of Santa's helpers out there!! ;)

I had a similar request for a birthday present earlier in the year.

I would check your local craiglist ads for drafting tables. The other place I found really nice drawing tables for a decent price were at Blick Art Supplies.

You might have other art supply stores locally, so I would check those as well.

Blick has over 73 different models, most are in the $100-$150 range:

https://www.dickblick.com/categories/furniture/art-studio/ta...

There is also the option to use an iPad as a drawing tablet now. We've been doing this for a few years with Astropad. https://www.astropad.com

Astropad connects your iPad to your Mac and so it acts like a Cintiq. We have Windows support in private beta right now and we'll be launching it publicly next year.

This is compelling for a lot of people because:

1. The Apple Pencil is fantastic

2. You get a general purpose iPad as well!

And it is about the same price as a pen tablet with way more flexibility.

What is your definition of "expensive" ? I bought a wacom bamboo 9 years ago for $150 and it still works fine today lol

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