Reddit reviews Wacom Intuos Art Medium Pen and Touch (Old Version)

I just bought this one and like it a lot.
Wacom Intuos medium
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B010LHRVOY?pc_redir=T1

This is the cheapest Wacom tablet

and don't ever let yourself feel limited because you have the "lowest end" Wacom. This person has a Bamboo Connect and it doesn't look like it's holding them back any!
For reference, the Bamboo Connect was the lowest end Wacom tablet four years ago

These lower end tablets do have a smaller surface area. It's about on par with the size of your standard postcard. If you want something bigger but cant afford Wacoms larger offerings Huion is another company I would recommend.

Specifically these two models
Huion H610 Pro

Huion Giano

The reason I favor Wacom is just overall customer and driver support. Huion is just a chinese company and their customer and driver support isn't the greatest. But if you are patient their tablets are just as good.

I only know all this info off hand because I've spent the last two weeks shopping for a tablet myself. I ended up ordering one of these it arrives tomorrow and I can't wait to try it out. If it's disappointing I might return it and order the Huion Giano I linked above.

I would second getting at least a Medium if possible. As soon as you get to school and past the mandatory analog courses, you'll wish you had a larger tablet. Ideally your school will have some Cintiqs to practice on as well, and going from a Cintiq to a small Intuos won't be fun.

So yea, https://www.amazon.com/Wacom-digital-graphics-drawing-painting/dp/B010LHRVOY seems like a good bet

Thanks! I appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions i'm going to go for the Wacom Intuos Art MD

With that budget I'd recommend this one https://www.amazon.com/dp/B010LHRVOY/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_awd_x_KvkhybATCBNFY

I recently bought the Huion Inspiroy H640P for my sister's kids, partly because I wanted them to experience drawing/painting digitally (I set them up with Krita), but also because I wanted to test the tablet. I currently use a Wacom Intuos Art Medium, which serves me well enough (I've been using Wacom products for years). The Huion responded well and I found it to be a quality product. The fact that it was less than half the cost of my Wacom ($50 vs $150) made it all the more impressive. I haven't made the switch myself at this point (although I'll pick one up as a backup soon enough), but for anyone looking to go digital without making a huge investment, I highly recommend that Huion tablet. It's plenty big enough to work on and the drivers seem just as stable as Wacom's drivers.

Edit: if you want to see what I'm making with the Intuos (so, when I say the H640P is great quality, this is where I'm coming from): https://www.instagram.com/johningallsart/

I am using this Wacom Intuos: https://www.amazon.com/Wacom-Intuos-Medium-Touch-Version/dp/B010LHRVOY

There are "Pro" versions, but I've never felt like I needed an upgrade. I got used to drawing on the tablet in maybe two days. It might seem like an issue, drawing on one surface and watch the other, but you hardly notice, eventually. Switching between a paper and a screen-less tablet is also no big deal.

Tablets with a screen, like a Cintiq, are great, but they are costly and not for everybody. I know quite a few seasoned professionals who got a Cintiq and then went back to their screen-less Wacoms.

I recommend the Wacom Intuo Art - Medium.

Typically $200, comes with no frills, and has an active area of 8.5x5.3 inches. Anything smaller for active area is really hard to translate arm movements to on screen. It's got a lot of pressure levels and the stylus is easy enough to hold for long hours of use-but can also be switched for something else. The nibs on the stylus last too. Active area is wide, so it matches the monitors more people have. I use a square monitor right now, but that just means I lose some of the active area to keep vertical and laterial strokes 1:1. Next monitor is planned to be a 16:9 wide format and will give me the full active area with this tablet. Best of all it doesn't have one of those glossy, sliding drawing surfaces that to me feels unpleasent to draw on top of. It's thin and under a pound, easy to put in a laptop bag and smaller overall in width and length than a 14 inch laptop. Extremely portable.

> I want something that feels closest to using traditional medium and natural felling watercolor touch

There isn't anything like that. It's very similar to learning a new medium with the difference in feedback to the hand, friction from the pen, and pressure required to mark the work area. Same goes with the brushes in photoshop. It's something that you just got to jump in and see if it's for you.

I really harp on this model because of the decent active area for the stylus, professional quality of the tablet, and low price. I bought a smaller tablet back in 2006 and I feel like I'm throwing away money buying that small. It's much harder to retrain my hand to draw/paint on it, and sometimes the surfaces are that terrible glossy surface that feels more like writing on a white board. The marginally more expensive tablets in that area tend to pick useless features(basically mappable hotkeys) over active area size unless you're willing to jump to $350+. It's a good, not expensive tablet, that you can figure out if digital art is something you want to add to your work flow without going overboard to invest $400+ on something you might decide after 2-3 months to drop-which is common for people new to digital art.

The only negative for me is the usb cord goes off the top left of the device, and I feel like it should have been top right. It's fine on my laptop, but my desktop means I have to strategicly place the cord to avoid my work area since I keep the desktop to my right and the usb ports are elevated.

*****
I can't speak for the tablets that you draw on the screen. They typically are heavy, have some type of monitor connector(HDMI, VGA, etc etc), a usb cord, and an extra wall plug at a minimum to function with the laptop/desktop. I know people who do treat them as portable for the job, but their laptop back is like 30 pounds with all the equipment in it. Wouldn't describe it as a portable. I tried a cheap one($600) and it had that terrible smooth screen when you write on(very little friction when using a stylus), so do try to test it before investing that much.

I would go with the [
Wacom Intuos Art Pen and Touch digital graphics] (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010LHRVOY/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=dimz04-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B010LHRVOY&linkId=10dcc19742b2f6be9972373690d8a479) information related to this tablet:
Paint, design and create directly on your computer
Replaces your mouse and turns your computer into a digital drawing canvas
Battery-free, pressure sensitive pen helps you to draw thicker and thinner lines depending on how hard you push on the pen
Use your fingers to navigate, scroll, zoom your artwork with multi-touch gestures
Comes with a free Art Pack including: Corel Painter Essentials drawing and painting software, online tutorials, a free 8x10 metal photo print, and a 8x8 Shutterfly Photo Album
Four customizable Express Keys that put your favorite shortcuts like undo or copy/paste at your fingertips
Connects to Mac (10.8.5 and above) or PC (Windows 7 and above) via USB cable or wireless - wireless kit sold separately (B006MRAVFE) - and works with any software program.

Here are my recommendations (in order):

Wacom Pro Medium (PTH651): ebay and amazon
 
Wacom Intuos (CTH680): amazon
 
Wacom Intuos Art (CTH690AK): amazon

I was looking at this one https://www.amazon.com/Wacom-digital-graphics-drawing-painting/dp/B010LHRVOY I'm not sure if I could bare something smaller than my sketch pad.

Do you think this medium Wacom Intuos would be adequate? Btw, the majority of the work she gets is designing logos or graphics for small companies and nonprofits. I'm assuming all Wacom tablets are multipurpose enough but I'm not so certain.

I have this wacom tablet I would be willing to part with if you don't need the 2017 version. Fully functional and everything.

This one!
It is Pen and Touch, but I have honestly never bothered with the touch feature and I don´t really feel like it´s needed :P

I would go for this
I know that's outside your price range but when it comes to tablets it's worth it.

Cheap tablets can feel really sluggish and are not precise enough.
As for the version diffrences the only thing I see is the software that comes with the tablet.

Right. Your Intuos Art Medium is their hoobyist level product.

The main difference between the Intuos and the Intuos Pro is the pressure levels.

1. Intuos Art - 1024 levels
   
2. First model of new Intuos Pro - 2048 levels - the one I use.
   
3. Just released model of Intuos Pro - 8192 levels
   
   Your current model has 512 pressure levels, as did my old Bamboo. I could certainly tell the difference between 512 and 2048, but I can't comment on the 8192, because I have the previous Intuos Pro model (#2 in the list above). Going by the reviews though, the just released one has some issues.
   
   Intuos pro also has 8 programmable buttons, plus 4 switchable modes for wheel-less rotation pad. I use the keys fairly often, and the rotation thumb pad is nice to have for canvas rotation. I've never used an Intuos Art, but it looks like these are missing.
   
   If I had the choice, I'd buy the same thing again, and in Medium. My bamboo was small and it was just frustrating on a 27" screen.
   
   There is one other alternative, there are a fair few tablets with screens in them now, some of them around the price of the Intuos Pro medium. Maybe that'd be more to your liking. I can't comment though, because I don't have one.

Note: before picking up a tablet, draw traditionally. You don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on a tablet only to find out you need more practice, or want to quit (ever wonder why there's so many used tablets for sale?). If you've already built up some mileage, continue.

I had a small Intuos Comic (just an Intuos Draw w/ some software) for a half a year. It was affordable, and worked without issue. I did have two big issues with it, which mostly came down to personal circumstance.

• I have a huge monitor in comparison to the Draw. I came across a good rule of thumb on stack exchange while researching my new tablet. It's called the 1/3 rule. Basically, if your tablet is less than a third the size of your screen, there's going to be a dramatic difference between a stroke on your tablet and a stroke on your screen. I found this disorienting. Here is a comparison between the two tablets, alongside my screen. The difference is clear. Of course, if you have a smaller monitor, this point may be null.
  
  
  
• Every time I drew for more than an hour my hand would cramp up. Drawing with my arm was out of the picture (the drawing area is about the size of my hand), so I had to draw with my wrist :P. The pain turned me off from digital for a while.
  
  
  I recently upgraded to an Intuos Pro Large. I got it refurbished for the price of a medium pro. I am very happy with my purchase. I can draw as big as I want, and for longer than a few hours. My computer is now my primary sketchbook.
  
  The Intuos Pro Large is a bit spendy though. I got it at a discount for $350. If I were you, I'd spend the extra $100 to get the next largest tablet in the Intuos line, the Intuos medium. You could probably get it refurbished, if it costs too much.
  
  I should add that I haven't tried this tablet, so take my suggestion with a grain of salt. If it is just a larger version with all the same features (it looks like it is), then I would go for it. My only issue with the smaller one was that it was small. If size isn't that big an issue for you, then go for the small version.
  
  Whatever tablet you choose, make sure you have a solid return path if you change your mind; no one wants to buy used tablets :(.