As an artist, photographer or design professional, you likely find drawing tablets incredibly appealing. These clever devices promise to catapult your digital creative endeavors to the next level through features like precise pressure-sensitive input, natural brush strokes and incredibly vibrant on-screen colors.
With new and improved models hitting the market all the time, it can be tempting to invest in the latest cutting-edge drawing tablet to keep up to date with the best available creative gear. However, while these gadgets undoubtedly enhance digital artwork, simply having the most advanced graphics tablet may not translate to better actual artistic skills or outputs.
Through this detailed guide, we will explore 7 compelling reasons why buying a brand new drawing tablet today may not be the best decision:
A Quick Primer on Drawing Tablets
Before getting to why you should potentially hold off on an upgrade, let‘s quickly understand what drawing tablets are and how they work to empower digital artistry.
What is a Drawing Tablet?
Also known as graphic tablets or digitizers, a drawing tablet allows artists to have precise control over digital inputs to closely simulate working with real-world media. It serves as a replacement for both pen/paper sketching as well traditional mouse input for creative tasks.
These tablets enable making fine and subtle adjustments to digital brush strokes through sensitive surface technology. This facilitates translating natural human fine motor control into digital environments smoothly and intuitively.
Main Components
A drawing tablet consists of three key components working in conjunction:
- Interactive Display Surface – The main tablet area where a pen or stylus can be used to draw directly, similar to paper
- High-precision Pen/Stylus – A digitizing pen that allows pressure sensitivity, angle and other inputs to be detected by the tablet surface
- Software Drivers – Programming that allows the tablet hardware interface properly with creative programs and apps
Key Functions and Benefits
From photography post-processing to digital illustration/animation and architectural concept art, drawing tablets empower versatility across mobile or desktop setups through:
- Pressure Sensitivity – Varying stroke depth/intensity/opacity dynamically
- Tilt Recognition – Natural flat vs angled input variations
- Superior Ergonomics – Better wrist/arm angles than regular mice
- Customizable Express Keys – App shortcuts for optimizing workflows
- Natural Lines and Brush Strokes – Digital art closely mirroring real media
Common Drawing Tablet Brands
The graphic tablet market has numerous established players vying for artists through cutting-edge models. Some leading names known for consistent innovation include:
- Wacom – Pioneering and respected for high reliability
- XP-Pen – Affordable choices with robust featuresets
- Huion – Strong budget-friendly options for beginners
- Apple – Seamless integration with Apple creative ecosystems
Now that you have a baseline understanding of these devices, let‘s examine why you may want to put off getting the latest upgrade for now.
7 Key Reasons to Avoid a New Drawing Tablet Purchase Today
1. Owning New Gear Doesn‘t Improve Fundamental Skills
A common temptation is perceiving a drawing tablet as an eraser – a way to magically hide flaws in digital sketches to aid progression. However, while the technology facilitates creative workflows, it cannot replace developing fundamental illustration techniques and skills.
According to concept artist and educator John Silva, "No amount of fancy equipment can help if you don‘t take the time to learn strong basics like proportion, form and color theory first."
Building sound illustrative skills requires dedication to proven traditional methods. Taking shortcuts by relying excessively on technological tricks often breeds bad habits. These ultimately limit artistic growth relative to those deeply rooted in fundamentals.
So while an advanced graphics tablet certainly enables realising your creative vision more effectively, it cannot fill fundamental gaps holding back your digital art today.
2. Restricted Color Ranges
One major reason artists upgrade to the latest tablets is achieving better coloring ability through vibrant matte displays and sophisticated software integration.
However, former Pixar animator Esther Kim notes, "The range of colors available digitally can still be quite limited compared to real-world media like paints. Optical quality also impacts how accurately colors get reproduced onscreen."
Coloring requires nuanced application of different pigments – not just filling spaces. Mastering control and technique to recreate vibrant, accurate hues is an entire skillset unto itself.
With physical paints or other traditional media, the possibilities are endless. But technical aspects in the digital realm result in restricted color output preventing the full spectrum being leverage adequately.
3. Purchase Cost Remains High
Drawing tablets sit across a vast pricing range depending on size, features and target users, with professional models reaching well beyond $2000. For example, according to Digital Arts Online the leading Wacom Cintiq Pro 32 can cost over $3000.
At these premium rates, avoiding an immediate upgrade is prudent financially unless specifically required for paying client work. In many cases, an older device may still adequately meet current needs.
Additionally, prices fall over time as technology ages – much faster for electronics than traditional art supplies. By the next seasonal sale the model you wished for could become way more affordable.
Early adopters pay a premium while patient buyers stand to save significantly for functionally comparable gear. Hence, weighed against other expenses, holding off purchase till you‘ve saved enough makes solid economic sense.
4. Determining Optimal Specs is Challenging
Outside of established professionals with very specialized needs, most users haven‘t honed their digital art style enough to determine specific tablet requirements accurately.
Trying to future-proof purchase decisions to align with ever-evolving artistic interests proves difficult. As animator Robin Williams reveals, "I purchased a $1700 tablet in art school attempting to get the best. But my style and creative interests grew so differently after graduating that I rarely use it anymore."
Unless replacing a broken existing tablet, avoid overzealous specifications and focus on the minimum essentials instead. As experience using digital art tools grows over months and years, increased clarity regarding ideal future upgrades based on actual need follows.
Jumping in too quickly because something seems exciting usually leads to sub-optimal purchases barely utilized after the novelty wears off. By contrast, purchases aligned closely to real needs have much longer staying power.
5. New Tablets Carry Software Compatibility Risks
To leverage everything drawing tablets offer requires using compatible creative programs like Adobe Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint etc. However, these apps see frequent updates which can suddenly break existing tablet support unless specifically validated.
Per digital artist Rita Loyd, "I purchased a fancy XP-Pen drawing tablet that worked great initially with Photoshop. But a major Photoshop update a few months later caused tablet integration to fail forcing me to revert back to mouse input."
While vendors ultimately catch up with patches, the lag can seriously impact productivity. By avoiding the bleeding edge, users minimize the chance of disruptive compatibility issues since mainstream adoption and testing helps stabilize integration issues beforehand.
Unless you can recover from potential workflow disruptions financially, cutting-edge tablets still carry some firmware/software risks worth acknowledging.
6. Insufficient User Reviews on New Models
Making prudent purchase calls requires research – specifically customer reviews highlighting strengths or weaknesses in real world application. However brand new releases don‘t have this benefit owing to limited public exposure.
Attempting to ascertain if a tablet lacking field testing properly fits artistic objectives becomes guesswork. On the other hand mature product lines have extensive amassed user experiences allowing buyers to determine suitability accurately based on needs.
As drawing tablet expert Ryan Cruz suggests, "I typically recommend artists wait at least 3-6 months post any new tablet launch. Reliable user reviews take a reasonable installation base and some mileage across different use cases to surface."
While the lure of the latest features is alluring, actual stability, ease of use and durability characteristics take time to surface through shared first hand accounts. Resisting impulse purchases based on marketing claims alone until substantive feedback is available is the savvy approach.
7. Future Proofing Rarely Works with Rapid Improvement Cycles
Drawing tablets see aggressive iteration thanks to rapid technological improvements and intense market competition. Each product generation leapfrogs predecessors through better sensitivity, lower latency, more color accuracy and other metrics.
Given the exponential rate of improvement, devices purchased today risk becoming outdated much faster than traditional art supplies. Digital arts journalist Selma Halloran indicates, "Tablets bought for ‘future proofing‘ typically don‘t retain parity with newer models beyond 2-3 years thanks to the blistering pace of electronics advancement."
Opting to wait somewhat before upgrading allows benefiting from improved specifications and declining prices of subsequent models compared to buying the cutting edge today. Unless current tools are fully deprecated already, the smartest move is to squeeze maximum value before the next purchase.
Summarizing the Key Takeaways
Before proceeding with any drawing tablet purchase, carefully weigh the pros and cons outlined earlier against priorities:
Reasons to Wait Before Upgrading
- Won‘t improve fundamental illustration skills by itself
- Limited color range compared to traditional media
- Costs remain relatively prohibitive
- Difficulty determining optimal specifications
- Risk of integration issues with creative software updates
- Insufficient real user reviews on latest models
- Exponential improvement trajectories
Factors Favoring Immediate Purchase
- Complete replacement need for deprecated existing tablet
- Necessity for paid client work deliverables
- Strong financial situation allowing stress-free buying
- Highly specialized needs aligned to cutting-edge specs
- Having excess budget allocated for tools upgrade
For most artists, the wiser path is mastering creative fundamentals using existing solutions unless limitations are severely impeding income generation. Regular technology advances also continue bridging the gap rapidly between entry level and professional grade gear.
Aligning purchases directly to specified needs of the moment rather than vaguely perceived future requirements leads to better long term value. It also prevents costly investments sitting idle after initial novelty wears off.
Carefully assessing how specifically a potential upgrade empowers your creative journey today is necessary context. This minimizes chances of post-purchase regret or abandonment from misaligned expectations.
Final Thoughts
Drawing tablets provide fantastic creative possibilities previously unattainable traditionally. However, they shouldn‘t be viewed as magical silver bullets rapidly boosting artistic abilities. Core illustration skills still require nurturing through timeless fundamentals before emerging technologies can act as leverage.
Consider the points highlighted here before succumbing to the temptation of "latest and greatest" gear needlessly. Focus on upgrades delivering maximum utility relevant to current skill levels for optimizing creative development and financial prudence.
body{visibility:hidden;white-space:pre;font-family:monospace}
window.alreadyProcessedMarkdeep||(document.body.style.visibility="visible")
