Budget Tablet or Wacoms

Its been a while but I used to use a Tablet at work for CAD drawings and found them to be very useful and quick to use so I guess that for photo editing they will have their place and help in finer details etc. But do I need to spend a fortune to get good results ?

Has anyone got experience of using budget tablets (ie Trust) against the more expensive ones such as Wacom...... Is it really a false economy or do the budget ones perform well....

TIA
Birderman

My Monoprice works very well and was a bargain. Only downside is the pen is battery-operated (no cord).

Go for one of the Wacom Bamboo's their not much more expensive than the Trust ones and leagues above in quality.

The WACOM Bamboo Pen Graphics Tablet can be had for £39.99 if you order it online at PC World rather than the instore price of £49.99

Go Wacom. Beats anything else hands down. If you don't want to spend a lot of money then do what the fellow before me said and go for one of the smaller ones, like the Bamboo Pen & touch.

I"m wary of Wacom. They dropped support for the UD-series. I have one and I know it's old but it still works. However, there's no updated driver support for newer OS. I guess they want customers to buy newer tablets. And they're a little on the expensive side. They are quality tablets though.

The Monoprice tablet is interesting. Price-wise at least. I don't see any driver support though. Hmmm...

http://www.monoprice.c​om ….asp?c_id=108&c​p_id=10841

My Monoprice works fine on my Win7 64-bit. It has 16 hot-keys at the top (not actual keys, but areas you can tap on the tablet) that is user-definable for programs or key combinations - i defined all of them to PS CS5 shortcuts.

solara wrote in post #12214537
My Monoprice works fine on my Win7 64-bit. It has 16 hot-keys at the top (not actual keys, but areas you can tap on the tablet) that is user-definable for programs or key combinations - i defined all of them to PS CS5 shortcuts.

From the quick search I did, the manufacturer seems to be UC-Logic (based in Taiwan)

http://www.uc-logic.com/en/index.php​?ParentMenuID=2

http://www.uc-logic.com/en/index.php​?ParentMenuID=4

Tempting...

Stick with Wacom. I've had 3 over the years and now I have an Intuos3 9x12 that I love. The newer comparable model would be the Intuos4 Large. Don't skimp on a small cheap tablet. The bigger and more programmable buttons the better. You will find it more useful than just light manipulations. I use my trackball for video editing (my career) and my pen for everything else.

Gameface wrote in post #12214636
The bigger and more programmable buttons the better.

I don't agree with that at all. But, this is probably personal preference.

Me, I have an Intuos3 wide Medium and find it's too big for editing work. I love it for free drawing and sketching, but if I used it for editing only I would buy one of the small versions as that would be a better fit on my desk (the Medium tablet is pretty big already and with the keyboard there I sometimes struggle with it). Plus with a smaller tablet there's less ground to cover which is easier on the arm.

You can get a huge Monoprice for a steal if you want a big one. But the nice thing about the Monoprice is that you can adjust the area of the tablet that is used (with the provided software), so if you want to reduce your hand/arm movements you can decrease the size of the area of the tablet that will correspond to the screen.

Obviously you can adjust the size of the working area of the Wacom to your liking as well. But if you buy a tablet for editing images and you end up reducing the working area of it to minimize hand/arm movements, then why buy a large one to begin with? Makes no sense.

Perhaps for some the cost is justifiable if they help with their work/jobs. For hobbyist or someone who wants a wee bit more precise movements than with a mouse, then a budget tablet may be more than enough.

Yeah I don't see a good reason to be spending big bucks on a tablet esp. if you area hobbyist.
I keep hearing recommendations for Wacom but has anyone compared a Wacom to the Monoprice? I don't have the Wacom but I can certainly say the Monoprice works very well.

And the reason why someone may want to buy a bigger tablet, esp. if it's their first, is because, well, they can (and Monoprice is so cheap) and it may be useful for certain things. But if they buy a big a big one and find they don't like having to move their arms much, then they have the ability to reduce the area and convert it to a smaller tablet. It's all about flexibility and customization.
But if they buy a small one and then find they really want a larger one - well, then they'd have to shell out more money.

I bought a cheaper Genius tablet because I was aware of how seldom I do selections and masking.

Sitting there most of the time, it dosen't make much difference which brand it is. It still does the job better than a mouse when I need accurate tracing.