best inexpensive tablet for drawing?

I'm looking to buy a tablet for drawing. I'm not a professional illustrator by any means, but I have a comic I'd like to work on digitally. My main needs are that it works decently well with Photoshop, and that it's Mac compatible. It would be cool if it were compatible with Comic Life as well.

I've looked at the Wacom Bamboo tablet, which is $70. I've also looked at cheaper options like the VT PenPad.

I've read reviews of both, but I'm hoping to get some firsthand insight. Does anyone else here draw/color using a tablet, and if so, which of these two would you recommend? Thanks in advance if you can help.

 

I own a Bamboo Pen and Touch. Drawing works well with it; it registers my pen strokes accurately, and knows the difference between different pressures (darker v lighter strokes). I mainly use it for writing however, and for that it works well also. As you've probably read in reviews, the Bamboo should work under OSX.

What exactly would you like to know about it? I haven't played with mine in a few weeks, though I can break it out to answer any questions.

 

My colleague uses the Wacom Bamboo (Small) tablet for her graphic design work as well and its a valuable tool for her. As privatejarhead mentioned its quite accurate for a budget tablet, my colleague don't seem to have a problem registering stroke pressures for her design work (she uses Adobe Illustrator mainly). In fact she uses it so much she favours the tablet over her mouse for everyday stuff such as internet browsing too.

 

For well known brands the bottom line Wacom is the standard used to be called the graphire, but now its bamboo.

However a much less known about product that is supposed to be just as good in almost ever aspect for even less money is the monoprice tablets.

Read some of the reviews on them, you can get a larger size for much cheaper than the wacom offerings.

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Example: a 12"x9" tablet for $87
For only $81.20 each when QTY 50+ purchased - 12x9 Inches Graphic Drawing Tablet | Graphics Tablets

The wacom equal to this is the Large size that goes for like $500. User reviews pretty much tell the story. Almost all 5* wacom is GREAT but they charge way more than they have too just because its the industry standard and many (most) people do not know there are actual alternatives out there similar in performance.

Until you know you want to use a tablet and are ready to invest a lot of money into a wacom I would most definitely recommend one of the monoprice tablets for your starter.

Myself personally would get one of these for personal use or fun or to start with instead of any of the bamboo line, only if I was willing to invest a lot of money for something I would use daily or for work would I the go straight to the Intuos4 Medium from Wacom as it has features that are not found on the lower tablets.

 

Thanks for the heads-up on the monoprice tablets, I am def taking a closer look at these.

 

I'd say go for a low-end wacom. I've used wacoms for the last 5 years, and they are really the standard. While having a low-cost entry unit like a monoprice tablet+pen is nice, I'd really suggest steering away from something like that as your first initiation to tablet usage. Once you "grow out of" the smaller size and can justify carrying around a larger one (the 6"x4" model is super portable for my graphic designer wife who takes it with her always, rather than her 11x7), then you could try the monoprice one for only a little more and you could even resell your wacom at a price close to purchase price (since the retain value pretty well).

Seriously, go for a wacom bamboo, they're light on price but still great.

One refurbished for $61.
A newer model and new for $70.

 

Most people are scared to stray from wacom for some reason. I guess its all they know but when your staring face at an equal product for 1/4th the cost I cant find any reason to go with the higher priced product.

The monoprice tablets equivalent to the bamboo cost about $20.

Who cares about resell value when it was just $20, its worth my time/money to not worry about reselling it and keep the $20 tablet as a backup if I decided to upgrade to a high end wacom intuos later.

Make no mistake the Intuos is the only wacom tablet that has any features or specs that beat the monoprice tablet, other than being a conformist there is no reason to get the bamboo over the monoprice.

Im not making money off of this, I am just more experienced and well versed in shopping around and doing my research.

Note the wacom tablets are measured by size not by drawing area. The new bamboo are less than 6"x4"

So
One refurbished for $61

directly compares to
One brand new for $21

Take the time to read the user reviews like I did. You will find many wacom owners and previous wacom owners keying in with 5* reviews and admiting that they were surprised to find products doing the exact same thing for 1/4th the price.

If the OP had some question like. "Going off to art school to work on my digital arts degree, need a tablet for school" or something I may say get the Wacom just because chances are that the instructor will be used to one and its more common, and its something they will use for atleast the entire duration of school.

But the topic was "best inexpensive tablet for drawing" and that is exactly what I am suggesting.