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Cheap Tablet or..?

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Topic Starter
Espionage724
I'm thinking of buying a tablet in the near future. Wasn't trying to go near or past $100, so I was curious how some of the cheaper Tablets would perform.

I plan on purchasing from Newegg, and here's the list of Tablets sorted from Lowest to Highest: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... IsNodeId=1

Here are the 4 tablets that seem pretty decent for the price:

MSI StarPad
Genius G-PEN 4500 4" x 5.5" Active Area USB Tablet with Cordless Mouse and Pen
VisTablet Vtpenpad 6" x 4.5" Active Area Tablet
Genius I608 6" x 8" Active Area Mousepen Graphics Tablet

Also kinda leaning towards a WACOM CTL470 5.8" x 3.6" Active Area USB Bamboo Connect Tablet, but I'd hope I can use a tablet for something else other then osu! (I don't mess with Photos or anything like that). There was a thread if I recall right that described how tablets worked with other games, I'll have to see if I can find it again and give it another read.

I like the StarPad and VisTablet due to how they look, but idk exactly what to look for when it comes to specs. Also, I never used a tablet before. If anyone had any other tablet suggestions, I'd like to know :)
MonoCholor
Wacom Bamboo CTL-470 is pretty good. *well bamboo series is preffered for osu as you probably know* Mine came just a few days ago and it works well. Looks nice too o.o I would recomend it :3
DennisGG
Wacom Bamboo seems to be the most popular brand among Osu! players
Topic Starter
Espionage724
Nice, yea I do hear that Wacom tablets are most popular here. I'd imagine this wouldn't be easily possible, but how is playing other games with a tablet in place of a mouse?
thelewa
FPS games don't work at all, strategy games work.
Topic Starter
Espionage724
Hmm, is there any reason as to why FPS games don't work? like is it camera-control related, or is it clicking? Or both :p
Daru
First things first, a tablet is not primarily a gaming device - it's purpose is digital art (like painting, drawing, and photomanipulation), but it happens to work very well with osu!.

Now, Wacom is something of the "name brand" of tablets. They have a very good history of quality devices and are widely accepted as producing the best tablets. That's not to say that they other brands are necessarily bad, but having played around with a variety of tablets, I can say that I prefer Wacom's. Of course, if your purpose is to use it with only osu!, then you probably won't care about things like pressure sensitivity, included software, or extra features beyond absolute position sensing.

In the end, though, Wacom tablets tend to be of higher build quality than other brands, and I can personally contend that my Intuos3 has withstood 4 years of abuse (both in drawing and hours of osu!) and still works like it was new. Seriously consider getting the Bamboo, even if it is more expensive, because you get what you pay for in this case.

It's also worth noting that the Starpad is essentially a laptop trackpad for your desktop. Not very useful for osu!, and honestly, Apple did it better.
Topic Starter
Espionage724
Cool, thx for the info Daru :) I'm hoping that wacom tablet drops in price a bit sometime this month though so I can fit it into my budget easier (I'm also trying to buy SW:TOR)
Topic Starter
Espionage724
Hmm, in the event I can't purchase the wacom tablet, would the Genius G-PEN 4500 or VisTablet Vtpenpad work fine for osu! as well? (I could probably care less for the cordless mouse that comes with the Genius tablet)
Xact
I bought my CTL 460 refurbished for 46 bucks I think it was.

Btw, you can likely pull off playing an fps game if you use it in mouse mode...would be near impossible to play it in pen mode.

For under 100 bucks though, I wouldn't go with anything but the ctl 460/ctl 470..they just reach a level of quality that other sub 100 tablets can't come close to

http://www.overclock.net/t/1171572/bamb ... t_15748459

guy is selling his for 50 bucks, I buy from people on there all the time, great community
Topic Starter
Espionage724

Xact wrote:

I bought my CTL 460 refurbished for 46 bucks I think it was.

Btw, you can likely pull off playing an fps game if you use it in mouse mode...would be near impossible to play it in pen mode.

For under 100 bucks though, I wouldn't go with anything but the ctl 460/ctl 470..they just reach a level of quality that other sub 100 tablets can't come close to

http://www.overclock.net/t/1171572/bamb ... t_15748459

guy is selling his for 50 bucks, I buy from people on there all the time, great community
Hmm yea I recently learned about mouse mode being needed for shooters.

My budget at this current time looks to only be within range to get the VisTablet though (or the next cheapest down, but.. more expensive is usually better). Emailing the manufacturer appears this tablet also has mouse mode too (it wasn't specified anywhere to my knowledge) (also, they were pretty quick to reply which was awesome). Overall, this tablet seems pretty nice for the price.

I gotta wait till early next week before finalizing the purchase, but I guess more feedback would be awesome :)

Unrelated, but I also plan on buying a GIGABYTE GM-M6880 mouse too. I chose it because it was cheap, ergonomic (if that's the right term), laser, and just looks cool. My plans are to just use the tablet for most things to see how it would work out, then probably see which games I prefer on mouse vs tablet.
dudusek
Do not but Laser mouse, because it is not precise. It has always some positive accel. You should buy optical mouse like WMO 1.1a or IE 3.0 or 1.1a.
Topic Starter
Espionage724

dudusek wrote:

Do not but Laser mouse, because it is not precise. It has always some positive accel. You should buy optical mouse like WMO 1.1a or IE 3.0 or 1.1a.
Hmm, that's the first time I heard of that. I use some cheap cloth mouse pad, but would optical really be a better choice? (i have no plans of using some weird textured surface)

I also had the GIGABYTE GM-M6800 and Kensington Pro Fit Mouse in mind, and their both Optical.
dudusek
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6826105184
Here is WMO it costs 11.99$. IE 3.0 is around 30$. Both of them uses Intellieye Optical, and it tracks very well on most of surfaces. You will not have any trouble with using wmo+clothpad. Also WMO doesn't have prediction(drift control).
Topic Starter
Espionage724
That WMO mouse has some awesome reviews. Thing is though, that color goes against my entire computer setup (black with some blue) :/, if that model (or any other mouse with Intelleye Optical) came in black, I'd buy it :p

Edit: Dang... Newegg used to sell it too but it's deactivated now: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6826105185
Topic Starter
Espionage724
Well I decided on my parts:

Microsoft Comfort Mouse
VisTablet Vtpenpad

I got that particular mouse because BlueTrack apparently offers near or better tracking then laser mice (I'll find out if that's true soon enough), and has a cool blue light :p I got the Tablet because it was cheap and looks decent enough. I'll be sure to report feedback on both of these when I receive them, since these devices don't seem too popular.

At some point I'd probably be getting a keyboard too. I had the i-rocks KR-6260-BK in mind (I hear it's "like" a mechanical keyboard, but not a mechanical keyboard). For $20 it sounds like a decent alternative to a $100+ mechanical keyboard :p
Topic Starter
Espionage724
Just got the tablet today. Everything seems to work as intended :D The only thing I don't like atm is the mouse-mode doesn't seem to actually work in shooters? (I heard it was supposed to work, but it just spins my camera downward). Not that this is a big deal at all though.

Another thing is, I can't use a portion of my pad for my screen (driver restriction), I have to use the entire pad. Not a big deal either, it's kinda fun :p
Neruell
I totaly don't know anything about mouse mode but just my opinion, maybe it's because of the "dpi" the tablet has. It like you play with a 999999999 dpi mouse which would be way too fast for a common game maybe? Totally don't know.
Topic Starter
Espionage724

Neruell wrote:

I totaly don't know anything about mouse mode but just my opinion, maybe it's because of the "dpi" the tablet has. It like you play with a 999999999 dpi mouse which would be way too fast for a common game maybe? Totally don't know.
perhaps so


Another thing I notice is that I seem to react slower with a tablet. I'm pretty sure this is expected since this is my first tablet, but idk. The fact I have to use full area I think is what is slowing me down a bit (I'm used to semi-high sensitivity with a mouse with my fingers doing to movement since I hold the mouse with the claw grip, so barely much movement). This tablet has me using my entire arm for motion at times, which seems to work alright, except fast jumps across the screen and stuff.
Neruell
Hmm use window mode for osu! this will make you use only a "part" of your tablet instead of completely full area.
Topic Starter
Espionage724

Neruell wrote:

Hmm use window mode for osu! this will make you use only a "part" of your tablet instead of completely full area.
Yea I tried doing that but idk, it bothers me trying to play osu! in a window, idk why.

I also just got the mouse, works very nicely
Neruell
Just from my experiance, the only reason I didn't like window mode was because of a slightly little lagg of the mouse/pen movement. After "I solved" it I pretty much always like it.
Topic Starter
Espionage724
I think it has to do with me being able to see my desktop or something, either that or I'm just used to Fullscreen/Full Area now. I tried last night to play in a window and just couldn't do it. Switched back to fullscreen, played a lot better :p
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