Mouse vs. tablet

[RPMiller]

It really depends on how you draw and if you plan on doing any tracing. For me, I have to have room when I draw as I'm not that artistic to begin with. In addition, I do some tracing from time to time and need the larger space. Finally, I use my tablet with CC3 and so need the larger space for the customized template for all the macros and such.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that one benefit of the smaller tablet is the portability. If you will be moving around a lot a smaller tablet is much nicer. Also, I wanted to recommend that you get yourself a piece of paper that is the same size as the drawing area of the tablet and try drawing a picture on it and see how it "feels" to you. That will go a long way toward making the decision regarding size.

[torstan]

I bought a large tablet initially and hated it. It takes ages to move the pointer around the screen and it took up a huge amount of desk space. I then got an A6 wacom and haven't looked back. I have never felt that the size was too small when working on it. I have absolutely no regrets about going for the smaller model and it comes with me in my laptop bag wherever I go.

[Absinth]

That's interesting. I thought about the size issue too. When I'm drawing in the old-fashioned way, I'd never use anything smaller than A4, so I thought a smaller tablet wouldn't make sense for me. What do you mean when you say that it "takes ages" to move the pointer around the screen?

[RobA]

Big arm movements.

The tablets map to the screen, so to move from one side to the other using the stylus requires moving from one edge of the tablet to the other.

If you are used to a more sensitive mouse setup, say 2 inches of movement across the whole screen, this change takes getting used to as you arm has to move, not just your wrist.

-Rob A>

[torstan]

Well I use my tablet to draw images that are A4 and larger. The point really is how often you draw one stroke from one side of an A4 page to another? If you are not doing large strokes like that then you don't need your whole image up on the screen. You zoom in on the area you are working on and the tablet will map very well to that region. You then move the window to the next piece of the image and work on that. I've found no issue with working like this. It just allows you to zoom out on the image for doing the rough sketching and then zoom in when you work in the detail.

The one issue I can see with the smaller tablet is that you can't really trace anything that is larger than the drawable size without some careful jiggling but I don't trace stuff so its not so much of an issue for me. Hope that makes sense.