Graphics Tablets - Ultimate Buyers Guide - 2021

hello and welcome to gabot media i'm grant abbott and today i'm going to give you the ultimate buyer's guide to graphics tablets display tablets and so on so this is an update of a previous video and i won't go through exactly what the differences between graphics tablets display tablets mobile tablets and so forth that'll be up in the top corner this video instead is my recommendations for graphics tablets in 2021. it's important to say that this video is not sponsored in any way there are affiliated links in the description if you click on them you'll be supporting me but you don't have to one thing that i did forget to mention last time was when do you need a graphics tablet so if you're in any drawing program such as photoshop critter clip studio whatever it is you will need a graphics tablet in my opinion to draw yes you can use a mouse it will certainly take you a lot longer to produce the same results and i don't think you can really get as good of results with a mouse in my opinion it does make a difference if you're using things like illustrator which are vector based you can use a mouse for that that's no problem it helps to have a graphics tablet but it's really not as important as when you are actually just sketching they do take a bit of time to get used to graphics tablets so you've got to look up at the screen and not look down at your hand and that takes about an hour to get used to so yes there is a sort of learning curve to it but it is really quick and it will make a huge difference to you in blender or 3d modelling programs texture painting and sculpting certainly it helps a huge deal to have a graphics tablet i i would say it's you can't do it without personally unless you are using things like stencils to paint with then you can use a mouse and that's not a problem or stencils to sculpt with even you can use it for things like editing photos as well i know a lot of people use photoshop and they um when you're sketching on masks and things like that sketching areas that you want to be bright or darker or whatever it might be then using a pen tablet again is really helpful and really useful too so is there any new technology that's available to us now that wasn't since the last video well lots of tablets now have this ability to be plugged into mobile phones the obvious limitation of that is that you've got a really small screen so the screen size your mobile phone and then you've got this tablet and you're staring into this small screen i think yes it might work for students or people who really need to be portable but have sort of budget constraints and most people have a phone so you can get away with that but i think it's a bit more gimmicky than anything i haven't seen anybody use that but maybe there are out there comment below if you know of people that do that it's also worth saying that a lot of the cheaper brands which i'll talk about in a moment they're now getting the laminated screens in there display tablets which means the parallax is much less so your drawing experience you're much closer to the canvas and that's quite nice so i'll be talking about that a bit more later so let's get on to my recommendations let's start with basic drawing tablets well there's not much in it if i'm honest avik huion yugi artazole xb pen gammon wacom they all work well and they're all pretty good uh when you're buying a tablet though uh obviously a main consideration is the price but always look out for has it got pen pressure so pen pressure above 2000 that's you won't really be able to tell the difference between 2 000 and 8 000 unless you're in fact i can't and i've been drawing for quite a while now so i don't think you'll notice the difference either and moving from one tablet to another the bigger issues are things like uh what the pen feels like and you won't notice that pen pressure difference in my opinion also make sure it hasn't got a rechargeable pen one of those wires that you have to plug in every month or so it's just a bit annoying it's another thing to go wrong lots of people say they have problems with those wires after a few months or so so just look out for those don't bother with them most tablets now have a pen that doesn't need charging there does seem to be a bit of a difference in build quality though i've got to say that wacom certainly the leading brand at the moment their build quality is much more sturdy feeling than some of the other brands huion is another one that has very sort of rigid good build quality by the looks of things and others seem to lag behind a little bit although i've not found any difference with the tablets that i've used they've all lasted a reasonable amount of time so i don't think it's something to worry about but just for the feel of it if you're worried and you're let's say portability is a big thing for you and moving around a lot then you don't want something that's a weaker build quality huion and wacom are the most sturdy in my opinion so what's my actual recommendation then well wacom is the leading brand so you are going to get probably the best support with them in terms of the driver and compatibility and so they're probably at the top of the list for this one they are the most expensive though the cheapest is the one by wacom not the wacom one which is really confusing why you would name things almost the same like that i don't know but the one by wacom and if you need to find it it's a ctl dash and usually that's the two different types in there so ctl but look up wacom1 ctl and you'll find them roughly around 35lb for the small one generally i'd go for a bigger graphics tablet so um six by four i think is the small one which is about this sort of size i'd go a little bit bigger unless maybe space on your desk is important to you then you might want to go for the smaller one but the bigger one is a better drawing experience in my opinion the smaller one is 35 and the big one is around 50 pound and that's similar in dollars as well there are limitations to this sort of cheap wacom version if you want to go for the more expensive range that's called the intuos range but the one by wacom is the sort of cheaper version for students and so forth it's pretty good but there are limitations so it doesn't have the same amount of pen pressure like i say you probably won't notice the difference it has no buttons on the side either but i say they're pretty minimal things really so i would recommend this one again the most important thing to me i would say is this sort of compatibility and wacom seems to be the best for that my favorite brand at the moment is the xp pen because of those compatibility issues they often have discounts and sales as well throughout the year so it's a bit cheaper than the wacom it seems to have very good compatibility in drivers maybe not as much support as the wacom but certainly the best out of the cheaper brands it might not be quite as durable though it doesn't seem quite as sturdy in terms of the build quality but i would still thoroughly recommend it personally okay so let's move on to display tablets well here's where the compatibility issues becomes a big issue there are big driver problems it seems with the cheaper brands i've tested a lot of these have been sent a lot of them yugi artisol huion xp pen and so forth and the only ones that i've found to work without problems are the xp pen and the wacom all the other brands i've had difficulties with when it comes to drivers and that's on both my new machine and my old machine and i think it's something to do with more sort of high-end pcs maybe even the graphics cards in them because i have generally speaking uh quite high-end consumer graphics cards so there might be compatibility issues there you don't seem to get those same compatibilities when it comes to putting them on a mac or a laptop as i've passed them on to friends and they've not had problems in the same way i've had but for that reason i would only recommend the wacom and the xp pen it's not that i'm sponsored by them or anything that's just my experience now there's big jumps in price and there's big differences in specification as you go up the major thing you're looking out for is the parallax as i've mentioned before so the distance between pen and canvas especially when you're going to the far corners with the bigger tablet your angle that you're viewing your screen at will make a difference to the icon you're pressing in the corners so just watch out for that i if you're going to go for a bigger tablet size then i would suggest going up in terms of the price that you're paying to go for a laminated screen because they have less parallax the other problems you might see with this is response rate so when you're stroking across the screen with your pen uh it might not be keeping up with you especially some of the lower end brands they tend to have a little bit more of this than the higher end and lastly minor issues like pen wobble and jitter as you're moving over and you're doing a fine line slowly there might be a bit of wobble into that line a lot of the time in the programs you have things like smooth stroke or just adding a bit of the smooth stroke setting can kind of sort that out and that's what it's kind of there for as well the size of the display tablet as well is something you'll need to look out for because a big tablet is obviously nice to use but it does take up lots of space on your desk and that is something to consider you have to remember that you are kind of drawing onto the screen so having space in front of that monitor is going to be important and having the sort of stability in a desk and a nice stand and so forth is going to be important so do consider the space that you're taking up um 16 inch seems to be the sort of happy size i like to go for a screen that's a bit bigger than that personally but for most people i imagine 16-inch is going to be a very comfortable drawing size for like i say most people to use now in terms of which brand to choose then well wacom are certainly leading the way with their cintiq pro range but they are extremely expensive they have the nice laminator screen and they have usually 4k screens so the resolution is really nice and that is another thing to bear in mind the resolution of the screen is all important the cheaper cintiq so just the normal cintiq 16 and 22 they only have an hd display which isn't quite as nice so if you're getting into that fine detail and you're looking at it all the time then a higher resolution display does help the cintiq pros offer that full 4k whereas the other brands that are the sort of pro brands from huion canvas or the xp pen uh pro brands this is uh they offer the sort of halfway so not 4k but it's sort of like a 2k version i can't remember they have a special name for fhd or something like that so it's a bit more than hd which certainly makes a bit of a difference now those cintiq 16 and the 22 the non-pro are 500 pounds and 800 pounds so they're quite high cost and they're comparable to things like the xb pen pro versions and the huion canvas they're pro version as well but the specs aren't quite as good you only get the hd display and you don't get the laminated screen with the cintiq so not as much resolution and you've got a bit more parallax than you will with things like the xp pen and the huion canvas the good thing of course about the wacom brand the cintiq range is that you get that driver support and you know it's probably going to work with your equipment so what would i recommend well i would go for the xp pen innovator 16. it's a really really nice piece of kit it's got a good feel when you're using it so no pen wobble or jitter or very minimal anyway it's got very minimal parallax as well comparable to the cintiq range it's a 16 inch screen which is a nice size it's actually really thin so it's portable as well so if you're using it with something like a laptop then this is probably the best bed as well and it's a good price range for that specification it's a similar price to the wacom alternatives those just non-pro versions so you're getting much more specification but much less price so the xp pen innovator 16 is my choice here now the cheapest display tablets you can get are around 250 pounds xp pen do a 12 inch version and you can look out for deals there because sometimes it gets under 200 pounds which i think is an absolute steal for a display tablet yes it's their cheaper end so you do get that bit more parallax but it is nice to be working onto a screen rather than a graphics tablet and sort of looking up like this i prefer it anyway so that wraps it up there hopefully this is helpful to you do look in the description for updates and i will answer questions in the description those sort of frequently asked questions in the description to help you make sure you look at other people's comments as well because they may have another experience and also be able to help so thanks for watching and i hope this helps

Channel: Grant Abbitt

Views: 83,365

Keywords: understand, texture, paint, learn, blender, tutorials, 3d, art, graphics, game, material, guide, easy, painting, how to, gamedev, tablets, graphics tablets, drawing tablets, pen tablets, tablet guide, display tablets for drawing, display tablet vs graphic tablet, display tablet review, best drawing tablet, drawing tablet, drawing tablet review

Id: IfC6mTMiaDA

Length: 11min 53sec (713 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 12 2020