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Mystic Tropical Climber
c6ec33
From what I've seen, Cintiqs can make things easier if you've never used a tablet before, but people eventually get used to using standard tablets if that's all they can afford. Many of the best artists I know use non-view tablets, and I know a number of crappy artists who use cintiqs. I've also known absolutely outstanding artists who just use a mouse.
There's actually also a couple of benefits to using a non-view tablet:
- You can use the money you save to invest in a higher quality machine/graphics monitor (a good color gamut IPS panel really helps).
- You don't have to worry about smudging the screen.
- You don't block out parts of the image with your hand as you draw.
- You're not tied to any specific screen resolution. Most of the affordable direct-view solutions have extremely tiny resolutions, so fitting your image AND your tools on-screen is a big hassle. Not so with non-view tablets: they can be used on monitors of any size and resolution.
If you've never tried a standard tablet before, and you want to check it out, I suggest either a low-end Wacom Bamboo or a monoprice tablet:
http://www.monoprice.com/products/search.asp?keyword=tablet&x=0&y=0
I have this one, and it's worked reasonably well. It's also pretty large for the $50 price tag.
http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=113&cp_id=11303&cs_id=1084101&p_id=6251&seq=1&format=2
That said, if you're set on a direct-view tablet, Cintiqs are one of the only viable options. A number of off-brand models have popped up in the past year, but they have almost no market penetration in most markets. The biggest one seem to be Yiynova. You can find a lot of their products from Amazon retailers:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Delectronics&field-keywords=Yiynova+tablet
Their prices are generally:
10" 1024x600, USB ONLY - $300
15" 1280x800, VGA ONLY - $400
19" 1440x900, VGA ONLY - $500
The main problem with these is that they're still pretty expensive AND only support VGA or USB. There is also the worry that driver support could be bad, or dry up in time. However, they seem to have positive reviews right now, so they might be decent.
Another alternative is to buy a convertible tablet/laptop PC that supports pen input with pressure sensitivity. Unfortunately, these generally stopped being popular (and therefore stopped being made) a couple years ago. I currently use an HP TX-2510US, which is one of the last of the "Wacom Penabled" tablet PC's made. The problem with going with something like this is that you're tied to the hardware and don't get the benefit of having a powerful and upgradeable desktop. As of right now, I'm not aware of any software that would let you convert a tablet PC into a pressure-sensitive tablet with a beefier desktop doing the processing. Old tablet PCs will generally run you 300-500 used, and normally come with a screen size of 1280x800 or so. In addition, I'd say to skip the model I got unless you want to bring a cooling pad around, since they overheat and start crapping out pretty easily.
There ARE some new tablet PCs around, but they're as expensive as buying a dedicated 12" Cintiq new. For example, Lenovo makes a modern tablet laptop which you can get with a Core i7 and up to 8GB ram for about $1500 if you configure it that way. It starts around $1100 for an i5 with 4GB of ram:
http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/thinkpad/xtablet-series/x220-tablet/
Another possibility is just buying a used Cintiq. You can find used Cintiqs on eBay from the most recent versions to old versions of questionable quality from a decade ago. However, even the cheapest used Cintiqs with horrible quality (remember how good LCDs were like 10 years ago?) still go for a few hundred bucks.
Another option is to buy a tablet with pen support. The cons for this are that, again, you are tied to the hardware. The only real option on this front that I know of right now is the Asus EP121, which uses and intel i5 processor and up to 4GB of ram. It costs around $900-1000, so again, as much as buying a dedicated 12" Cintiq new.
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