Tablet purchase guide
If you've been playing osu! and chatting with other players, you're bound to hear about these so-called "tablets", and their effects on gameplay in osu!. Tablets are pads that operate with a stylus that connect to your computer. As you hover the pen around above the pad, the mouse cursor moves with the pen, and tapping the pen clicks the mouse. You can think of a tablet for osu! in the same way as you think of an arcade stick for fighting games, not necessary, but some players prefer it.
Why tablets?
Their original purpose is to allow a greater degree of control in digital art applications, allowing the user to draw or paint on the computer as if they were using a pencil or paintbrush. The biggest difference that a tablet has over a mouse is that it features absolute tracking. This means that every point on the tablet corresponds to a particular point on the screen. If you lift the pen outside of the sensitive range, then put it down on another part of the tablet, the cursor will "jump" to that location. This is opposed to mice, which rely on relative tracking.
The biggest selling point of tablets for osu! is this absolute tracking. Every other parameter such as pressure levels, tilt sensitivity, barrel rotation, etc. will have no effect on your osu! gameplay. These features are for digital art, where the tablet can sense things such as the pressure you're applying to make a darker pencil mark, for example. The only specification which may affect your osu! gameplay is LPI (lines per inch).
This is essentially the "resolution" of the tablet surface, or how little you have to move for the tablet to detect it. If a tablet has 100 LPI, then you have to move at least 1/100th of an inch for it to register movement. However, even the lowest LPI should be far higher than any monitor that you're likely to play on, so higher numbers have a mostly unnoticeable effect on gameplay.
In short, tablets are an optional device to let you play the game in a different way. They were originally intended for digital art, but happen to work very well when playing osu!. Most specifications will make no difference in osu!.
Tablet Vendors
osu!store
Notice: The osu!store no longer sells osu!tablets. At this time, peppy has tweeted that if you want to try this input method, you may want to look into other alternatives.
With the goal of trying to allow players to try the tablet input method without putting a hole in their wallet, the osu!store once featured the osu!tablet. It was made by Huion and designed by flyte. The first version in 2013 featured the osu!tablet (white), a pen with a nib, 3 replaceable nibs, but required a AA battery for the pen (which was included but would add weight to the pen). The second version in 2016 feature the osu!tablet (black), a pen with a nib, 3 replaceable nibs, but the pen needed to be charged via USB (included).
osu!tablet v1 (2013)
osu!tablet v2 (2016)
Huion
Huion is a tablet company that is the supplier of the osu!tablet. They are best known for being cheaper than Wacom tablets by a large margin but some would say that their tablets feel flimsier and that running a tablet pen over a Huion tablet would feel as if you were on writing paper (in comparison, some say that on Wacom, it is as if you were writing on glass). Their tablet pens either require a battery or needs to be charged, unlike Wacom tablet pens, and their nibs may need to be replaced more often than Wacom nibs. Other than that, there really are not any noticeable differences between Wacom and Huion tablets.
The HUION H430P (4096) is similar to the osu!tablet (in fact, it is marketed towards osu! players).
Wacom
Wacom is the "brand name" of tablets. Tablets are all they make and they're widely accepted (by artists) as producing the best quality, most reliable tablets. Some would recommend buying from Wacom because of their reputation as producing high-quality products as a leader in the tablet world. They produce three main lines:
- Cintiq - "Draw directly on the screen" tablets, these are used in very high-end professional applications, and cost a pretty penny.
- Intuos - The Professional line of tablets, these have features above and beyond the Bamboo line, but lack a screen.
- Bamboo - The general consumer line of tablets, these come cheap with all the features you need to get started as a hobbyist.
There are other lines from Wacom, such as the Graphire or Volito tablets, but these names have been discontinued, replaced by the above lines.
For osu!, you are very unlikely to need a Cintiq or Intuos, these two lines cater to professional in graphic design and illustration, and cost much more than the tablets in the Bamboo line. They feature increased pressure sensitivity, more bundled graphics software, and advanced features such as barrel rotation or tilt sensitivity. These mean nothing in osu!, so only buy one of these if you're planning on using your tablet for serious graphic design work outside of osu!.
At the time of writing there are three versions of the Bamboo, all confusingly under the same "Bamboo" moniker (The Intuos lines are distinguished by number, Intuos5 is the latest at the time of writing). Some would recommend either buying the second or third generation Bamboos, the first generation Bamboo tablets had the extra buttons on the top of the tablet rather than the side, which makes them awkward for use in osu!.
First generation Bamboo (Pen and Touch, Touch, and Fun - Bamboo Fun shown)
Second generation Bamboo (Pen and Touch, Pen, Touch, Fun, and Craft - Bamboo Pen and Touch shown)
Third generation Bamboo (Connect, Capture, Create - Connect shown)
You'll want to stay away from either of the Bamboo Touch tablets, they do not feature pen input, they're just multitouch trackpads for your computer. Frankly, Apple did it better.
The other Bamboo models come in two sizes, basically small and large. For the second generation, Bamboo Touch, Pen, and Pen and Touch were the "small" ones, whereas the Fun and Craft were the "large" ones. For the third generation, the Connect and Capture are the "small", whereas the Create is the "large".
For osu!, you'll probably be looking at getting one of the "small" sized tablets because it's a common strategy to reduce play area so that you don't have to move your arm when you play. However, it's personal preference as to whether or not you want a larger tablet area, and it's especially worth considering the "large" size if you are also into digital art; drawing is much more comfortable on a larger tablet.
Lastly, CTL-480 tablets may be sold cheap on second-hand sites like eBay or Amazon, although they are often hard to find due to the discontinuation of the manufacturing. If you could find one for a reasonable price, they are definitely worth checking out, especially if you're also a digital artist. Beside Wacom CTL-480, which is commonly used and praised by players, there is also the CTL-470 lineup (such as the 470, 471 and 472 models), and the latest CTL-4100 series, which offers the same quality, if not better than CTL-480.
For osu!, however, the differences between the Intuos and Bamboo lines are negligible, the only real difference is that the Intuos lines have a much wider range of sizes than is available for Bamboo.
Other tablet brands
Beside Wacom and Huion, there are other competitors on the market, who manufacture decent tablets targetted at artists, and even osu! players.
Some of those manufacturers are:
- Gaomon (known for their Gaomon S620 tablet).
- XP-Pen (known for their XP-PEN G640 Rev A tablet).
- VEIKK (known for their VEIKK S640 tablet).
All of the tablets mentioned are of decent quality and often cost less than Wacom's tablets, which makes them good budget options.
In short, Wacom is recommended by most serious osu! players. Cintiq and Intuos tablets are too expensive and give no real advantage over Bamboo for osu!.
Recommendations
Here are some links to purchase the latest models.
Conclusion
These are only suggestions, however, there are certainly other brands out there that are cheaper than Wacom's tablets or better than Huion's tablets, most would definitely say that you get what you pay for in terms of quality.
Trivia
- Original forum post: Tablet Purchase Guide for osu! by Daru