I've been looking at buying a tablet as I've found mouse input to be somewhat clunky, I want to get the absolute best one I can, my budget is $100 dollars which seems to be reasonable.

One tablet I always hear about while browsing the web is the CTL-480, most people praise it as the "holy grail" of osu! drawing tablets and I pretty much decided then and there that it was what I would get, however there are some concerns I have.

Amazon sells refurbished CTL-480s at around $71, eBay on the other hand sells them for $99+ with some going all the way up to $200. Amazon's user marketplace is ridiculous with all options currently priced over $200.

My main question is, what is a good price to pay for a CTL-480? Also, are the Amazon refurbished tablets any good, like are there any faults or defects owners have noticed? Lastly, does the tablet get scratched easily? I can't imagine myself doing anything but dragging so that's pretty important.

Thank you!

Amazon page I'm referring to: https://www.amazon.com/Wacom-Intuos-Tablet-Certified-Refurbished/dp/B00MJKE0AU

chronicbackpain wrote:

I've been looking at buying a tablet as I've found mouse input to be somewhat clunky, I want to get the absolute best one I can, my budget is $100 dollars which seems to be reasonable.

...

Amazon sells refurbished CTL-480s at around $71, eBay on the other hand sells them for $99+ with some going all the way up to $200. Amazon's user marketplace is ridiculous with all options currently priced over $200.

My main question is, what is a good price to pay for a CTL-480?

In my opinion, the CTL/CTH-480 is a $60 USD tablet, quality-wise. To find one around that price, your best bet is probably buying used from ebay. (?)

You could also look for a CTL-471 / CTL-472. The 471 / 472 perform almost identically to the 480 (to the point where their stylus are interchangable!), and the 472 was produced more recently, it's probably easiest to find.

(A quick check shows new-in-box CTL-472 listings on ebay for $53. At that price, it's totally worth it, I'd buy one right now if I needed a tablet.)


Anything over $200 and you could seriously start looking at Intuos Pros / non-Wacom touchscreens instead -- the CTL-480 is a worse tablet than either of those options.

The CTL-480 is limited to a ~135hz report rate. The 480 stylus grip and shape is very poor, most people end up trying to fix its grip somehow. It's not a /perfect/ tablet to the point where it would be worth $200+, not even in a strictly-for-Osu sense.

The main benefits of the 480 are that it doesn't have hardware position smoothing, and its maximum hover height is very good.

If you can't find a 480/471/472 for a reasonable price, you could also look at the XP-Pen G640 (USD $30 on amazon, the G640 has a 250hz report rate but also has ~20ms of hardware smoothing delay), or you could look at the Wacom CTL-4100 (USD $70 from Wacom's website?, this has more physically accurate position tracking than the older 480).

chronicbackpain wrote:

Lastly, does the tablet get scratched easily? I can't imagine myself doing anything but dragging so that's pretty important.

Tablets always get scratched after you've used them a while. Your stylus nibs physically wear out from rubbing against the surface, this damages both the surface and the nibs. The CTL-480's surface is kind of matte and it's more resistant to scratching than, say, the G640, but if you're worried about this you'll eventually want a tablet cover. I don't have one, but people seem happy with foxbox covers: https://foxbox.io/collections/tablet-covers

Implojin wrote:

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hey, thanks for your detailed reply! i think i'll stick with the ctl-480