Top 3 Best Drawing Tablets for Digital Artists

Key Takeaways

what's up everybody it's your boy Nate and today I'm going to be doing a review of the best drawing tablets that you can get for under $500 I know you're excited I am - alright let's go [Music] as an animator and designer I use tablets a lot and I mean a lot and I know it can be confusing to pick between something like a Wacom tablet or an Apple pen or even a less established brand name for digital art can be so tricky and confusing like what's with your pressure sensitivity Apple where is it but anyways across the board for all these tablets I'll be using three black mixture metrics to rate the drawing tablets which are build quality functionality and design build quality is how well it's made can it handle stress functionality is how well it works or doesn't and design is how it feels okay so now that we've got that down onto the review so first up is by the longtime industry standard of the applet making or drawing tablet making I should say swak 'm Wakeham however it's pronounced and i first heard of lack of about ten years ago when I was getting my first ever drawing tablet that's right I'm talking about this one right here ten years ago it was about a hundred dollars but nowadays you could probably find it for $30 on eBay maybe even cheaper than that or you can even spend a little bit more and get it for the same price but with a newer design with less bevels and a really cool dotted texture on the lack of gas so the cool thing about Wacom is after the tablets last I got this about 10 years ago and it's been passed around toss the you know you name it just pretty much used it it comes as they use it at me drop toss do you name it and when I hooked it back up it actually still worked just like new and I even tried out the newer Wacom Intuos pen and touch tablets pen to see if it worked with this bamboo and it actually did so props to whack them for making such durable products and something that's definitely gonna last build quality I'd easily give this a five out of five for design this one is a little bit rougher looking the bevels are actually super huge bevel first bezel yeah anyway is also for design they've had years of iterations between their products it would also deserve a big fat five out of five definitely fits cleanly with my desktop setup this is the newer one this is the Intuos pen and touch small this is actually still a super old one I think this is like four or five years old and it still works like new so yeah you might be looking at a different design but ultimately these guys make what I would consider to be the best drawing tablets on the market their functionality insane and gets a well-earned black mixture stamp of approval now I'm gonna pull out the huge probably the most expensive one on this list but still under $500 so pretty cheap when it comes to drawing tablets yeah I'm on PD 1560 now I had never heard of llaman PD 1560 oh that's a weird name alright so I'd never heard of the Galman PD 1560 until Amazon recommended it and after reading like just countless positive reviews I figured why not check it out and try it out for myself it boasts a 15.6 inch display at 1920 by 1080 resolution and adjustable arm stand ten customisable hotkeys and 8192 the holy 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity which is way more than Microsoft Surface pro pen and it's pretty comparable to wackiness flagship super expensive products the Cintiq aside from its stacked features the main winning point of this tablet is its price which comes in at a super low 300 dollars USD essentially the PD 1560 is a computer monitor that has customizable hotkeys and also works with the stylus pen that means that it's not a standalone device and you're gonna need to hook it up to a laptop or computer in order to use it with something like Photoshop Illustrator z after effects for overall build quality I would give gallon three out of five because display and armstand work amazing but the pen itself is just kind of feels a little cheap it actually though works pretty well because I have not dropped it for functionality this tablet also gets three out of five because even though it comes with stack features they even throw in this like super nifty to finger glove that makes me feel extra nerdy all of these components don't work flawlessly together if their software just doesn't work that well that actually brings me to design which is three out of five because it's kind of a case of you get what you pay for you're not gonna find anything else steps gives you this big of a display at this grade of a resolution with an arm stand and that much pressure sensitivity so you're going to get some drawbacks to it that just happened to be designed which overall affected the entire experience so that's why this gets three out of five because the design is just not that clean when it comes to the software and how the tablet actually gets used but if you're interested in just getting an experience of drawing right onto a display and you don't want to shell out a lot of money for something that's also kind of professional this would be a great option so definitely check out the PG 1560 if you have a compatible iPad not sure which works with which but for the most part within the last three years I think you can buy a $100 Apple pencil which will turn your iPad into a pretty comprehensive drawing tablet now you can't use it for desktop and professional applications like Photoshop and illustrator ZBrush and After Effects but as a standalone mobile drawing experience I don't think anything can compare to what the Apple pencil and procreate can give you procreate is a well-designed application that runs very fast very smooth and actually corrects your strokes while you're drawing with the Apple pencil there is a little strange design I have a Greg move out with the pencil itself which is that the top cap has to be removed for it to be charged which then you're just like what do you do with the top cap and then also it just sticks out at the end which looks like a huge hazard for braking but so far it's worth nothing's gotten lost but kind of straight as they did that also it's $100 so this is coming off of buying an iPad which is not a cheap product in itself so actually you're probably looking at a few hundred dollars more but this is if you already have it I recommend getting the pencil because it's a nice upgrade surprisingly even though they don't advertise their pressure sensitivity I thought it worked very well and that's coming from using a Wacom which advertises like 8,192 levels definitely check out Apple pencil huge black mixtures dancing people for design build quality functionality give it a actually for functionality to be able to be out of five but for everything else I'd give it a five out of five all right that's it further view now I'm gonna be doing an in-depth review on each of these drawing tablets coming soon so make sure that you hit that subscribe button and notification bell so you're notified when those come out and as always if you found this helpful or even have an experience of your own with a drawing tablet that's not on this list please let us know in the comments our viewers would love to read it and so would we so thanks again catch you on the next one peace [Music]