Tablet suggestions

[THGL]

I'm waiting on a couple of huge checks from clients and I want to purchase a drawing tablet. I'm sticking with Wacom as the brand but I'm not sure which one to buy.

There's the Bamboo Fun Medium, roughly 8.5 x 5.5 area for $199 or the Graphire wireless tablet (about the same size) for $50 more.

This'll be my first tablet. I played around with a friend's years ago so I'm not going into this completely blind. I do know that an Intuos would be overkill and they're a hell of a lot more expensive. I'll be doing more vector drawing than painting so I think the extra sensitivity of the Intuos would be wasted.

The idea of kicking back with a cordless tablet is appealing and for only $50 more it isn't a huge stretch.

Any suggestions from current tablet users (if there are some)?

[Cold Fussion]

From my understanding of the bamboo series, they don't have tilt pressure variations so in that regard, the intuos would be a much nicer system to use.

[SirSmash]

I have a CTE-440 (entry level model right before the bamboo came out), a graphire bluetooth tablet, and my laptop uses a wacom digitizer on it's screen. I had a super cheap wacom before these and I've played around with the bamboo.

Between what you listed I'd highly recommend the graphire bluetooth. The price isn't that much more and the wireless is nice. Might not matter to you, but you can place drawings under the plastic and trace them if needed. It's nice and thin, feels more professional.

As far as intuos, make sure you don't want any of the accessories such as the air brush or mouse with side buttons. One thing to note is the accessories don't work between different lines (ex: I have 3 pens, one for each unit, and they do not work at all if you switch them around) so if you want the most options you'll have to go with the intuos line.

[PacketCollision]

Go with the Intuos. It's the only one with tilt-sensitivity, which is really useful. Wireless is just a gimmick, especially if you're going to be using it all the time and don't want to have to worry about charging the batteries. If you can, save up and get one of the larger tablets, 4x6 feels very cramped.

I used to have one of the entry-level tablets, and never used it. Once I got a decent Intuos, I suddenly understood what the fuss was about.