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[Gnabberwocky]

I've been considering drawing my own comics, so I've been looking at drawing tablets. I want something in the $100 dollar price range. I'm not too experienced and not super serious at this point, so I guess I'm looking for something easy for a beginner to master but also possible to use once I gain some more skill. I usually draw small, so size isn't too much of a problem (so long as it isn't smaller than, say, an index card). Any recommendations?

For reference, I have two that I'm currently considering: the Wacom Intuos and the XP-Pen Deco 01 v2.

Edit: I made a decision. Thread closed.

[hedgie]

I have a 5 year old Wacom Intuos, and it's quite nice, at least in Photoshop and Krita.  Pretty much plug-and-play for me as well.

[Skewbrow]

I was just assigned a brand new Wacom Cintiq by our department head. Basically to be used as a substitute for a chalkboard as I continue to give my college math lectures remotely. I got the drivers uploaded and installed all right, and ran the set up program. Then the "problems" started. Next I wasted a good six hours trying to draw. I reinstalled the drivers, clicked around the crappy Wacom technical support pages (the videos wouldn't start and the links took me around in circles). Only when I complained to coworkers one kind soul shared the secret that even with the best of hardware you cannot draw on a Windows desktop.  At least not without a suitable piece of software. And most pieces of software don't support the finer features (which is all what the manual was explaining).

So I'm not doing art. Drawing integral signs, handplotting functions and such (when I need to do so impromptu to fill in a step in my slides and such).

[Akima]

For reference, I have two that I'm currently considering: the Wacom Intuos and the XP-Pen Deco 01 v2.

I know I'm way late on this, but I'd say that Wacom is almost always the best choice, because their stuff is kind of the industry standard, and you're more likely to find driver/feature support in your software. I use an ancient Wacom Intuos 3, which is nominally not supported on the current release-level of my OS, but it still works just fine in GIMP.

[Gnabberwocky]

I went with the Intuos S, though from what it seems, the ones with screens are much easier to use. Out of my price range, unfortunately.

[hedgie]

Yeah, your cheapest reliable bet for a built-in screen would probably be the cheapest ipad with an apple pencil.  but not having the screen does force one to learn the same techniques one uses when doing the sort of life-drawing where you don't want to be focused down on your paper.  it takes a little while to develop the hand/eye coordination, but it's easy enough to develop.

If you're not planning on spending a lot of money on drawing software, Krita is very nice, and is fully cross-platform, so can be used on windows, mac, or linux.  The webcomic Pepper and Carrot uses it, and has gorgeous art.  I also like how the context menu is actually useful and not mostly get in the way of getting work done.

[Gnabberwocky]

Yeah, your cheapest reliable bet for a built-in screen would probably be the cheapest ipad with an apple pencil.  but not having the screen does force one to learn the same techniques one uses when doing the sort of life-drawing where you don't want to be focused down on your paper.  it takes a little while to develop the hand/eye coordination, but it's easy enough to develop.

If you're not planning on spending a lot of money on drawing software, Krita is very nice, and is fully cross-platform, so can be used on windows, mac, or linux.  The webcomic Pepper and Carrot uses it, and has gorgeous art.  I also like how the context menu is actually useful and not mostly get in the way of getting work done.

The Intuos came with a free subscription to Clip Studio Pro, which I think is actually what QC uses. It's not fantastic for museum-quality drawings but it's great for comic art.

[hedgie]

Oh, excellent! Been so long since I got mine that I had forgotten about the software bundle