Bamboos are a great start. I bought my friend one for his birthday (I don’t usually go that expensive for birthday gifts, but hes doing our art with it, so it was a worthy investment :)).
Get a medium bamboo and see if you like it. If you do, get an Intous and see if it can do the job. Unless you are way serious and feel that you need a Cintiq. Personally I would never buy a cintiq because I would rather be able to upgrade my monitor or buy a new tablet if it breaks. I am also a hobbyist, so I really don’t need anything more than an Intous.
Five years ago I got a graphire4 pen tablet from wacom to see if I wanted to invest in anything better. It was well worth the investment. I found out I liked tablets well enough and dished out about $360 dollars for an Intuos3 6x11. I love my Intuos3. Perfect size for widescreeen monitors or dual monitors. I know carry my small graphire with my laptop so I am never without a tablet.
I personally am not a fan of the Intous4 design and sizes available. I also hear the Intous4’s are notorious for destroying the “nibs” or pen tips of their pens. The nibs are replaceable and your tablet will come with a few, but the “real paper” texture on them chews through them.
I would highly recommend Wacom over any other brand. I did my research before getting my graphire and I have never been let down by either tablet I own. I never used any other brand, but I have seen a stark contrast in reviews of Wacom tablets vs other brands. Wacom tablets just seem to work and I have never had any problems after installing mine.
wacom is the only decent tablet manufacturer: everyone else uses far east cheap clones, I’ve been through a few before getting my trusty graphire. Bamboo is cheap and works perfect.
My VisTablet works extremely well. It works just as well as the Intuos I used to have.
don’t buy off-brand tablets. I bought one for about $30.00 and it stopped working a few weeks later. And it wasn’t that good when it did work.
I’m looking into a Wacom Intuos 4, anyone got any reviews? I also think the Wacom Inkling looks interesting, being the brand new product that it is.
I’ve got the very old Wacom CAD tablet, 21" diagonal, with the programmable buttons and the serial port connector (with a USB adapter) that still works fine. I also have a 10" Intuos from around 2007. I prefer the smaller Intuos for most of my work. The larger tablet is great for tracing, but it can give some serious arm ache when the 1:1 measurement between screen corners is 1:1 with the size of the tablet and you are having to move the pen all over the place to get anywhere. I like the Bamboo too and would get one if I needed a new tablet. I’ve drooled over the Cintiq and whilst the price isn’t a problem, I cannot justify spending that kind of money I would use once in a blue moon.
I wouldn’t consider anything other than a Wacom these days, and interestingly, tablet and convertible notebooks, e.g. Toshiba and Lenovo, with pen touch screens generally have Wacom hardware and software doing the work.
Most artists never use the features of the intuos series. Obviously a cintique is an artist’s dream, but like you, most people can’t afford them.
You’ll be fine with the bamboo. The real question for you is whether you want to draw big or small - or medium, lol. Just consider how big most of your paper drawings are and get a tablet that fits that size.
So, as a Hobbyist game developer, I should be fine with the Bamboo for sketching concepts, photshop, and Blender? I am really interested in Intuos because it seems more geared towards “creative professionals”
Dont spend so much money on it man… Unless you are actually using it every day that is a waste in my opinion. A bamboo is perfectly fine if you want to sketch some ideas or make some concept art stuff. I got myself a bamboo A5 and I am still playing around with it. Didnt waste a lot of money on that so I dont feel bad about not using it 24/7.
Plus I would not use it for blender except sculpting.
TehWut, its good for calligraphy. The only advantage to intuos is there are more pressure levels and tilt detection. The tilt detection feature is often disabled, and the 512->1024 pressure levels would only be noticed by the most demanding professionals, hence for 8 out of 10 people, the bamboo wins. Plus the price is just cool.
I have a medium size Intuos 4 and it’s been a joy to use, fully recommend it. It’s a bit on the pricier side of course but you definitely get what you pay for. The buttons it has are pretty nice, it has a scroll wheel which most apps will use to zoom in/out and the others can be used to undo/redo. The mapping software is really nice too, you can customize what each button does on a per program basis, so if different programs use different hotkeys it’s not a problem.
I don’t see why everybody is only suggesting Wacoms. There are many cheap Intuos alternatives that are just as good as if not better than the Bamboo.
I just got a Bamboo on eBay new, and I’m loving it.
Welcome to the forums! (Pro tip: As long as you don’t want to make an MMO you’ll be fine).
I haven’t used any of the newer Bamboos. I used one of the older ones. Are they much better?
Thanks guys! You probably just saved me a few hundred bucks.
Very true, I only got tilt to work in Corel Painter 11 to a degree and its not really noticeable in Photoshop CS5.5 with the brushes that can use it. Tilt is a little overrated. Same with pressure levels. When you install your tablet their is a control panel added that lets you adjust the pressure sensitivity so you can make your own sweet spot. the 512-1024 is not noticeable, at least with the work I have done. But I am just a hobbyist. If you really need the extra sensitivity, just adjust the opacity slider or brush width slider in Photoshop. That’s all the pressure usually affects anyway. It’s not like 512 will be the end of the world. It’s perfectly functional.
Okay. I just want one that will last awhile. Last I heard, the Intuos4 nibs wear down really fast and the sheets wear down as well.
Yeah, yeah, Me too!
Not terribly expensive (more than the Bamboo though), but looks very useful for those of us who are better at pen and paper than sketching on a tablet.
You can buy packs of replacement nibs and transparent sheets. 
I’ve seen them at the local art supply store, and a few places online have them. I have a couple of spare nibs from an older Wacom that I inherited. Unfortunately they aren’t compatible with my Intuos pen. 