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Thread: Should I buy Huion or Wacom?

  1. #1

    Should I buy Huion or Wacom?

    I'm looking at HUION 680TF model. From the other side there is Wacom One by Wacom Medium (and Wacome One by Wacom 2 Medium), but if Huions work fine these days then should I pay more? Does anybody use such? Also interested if it's possible to get some Wacom model that gonna have problems with ArtRage, is there still some risk if I buy Wacom?
    (And I can't find list of compatible tablets, I've seen it somewhere, though it's hard to understand it's description - supported and works the list tells)

  2. #2
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    I can't speak for those particular 2 models of tablets but I'd imagine either would be OK.

    The Wacom One is one of their more basic models as isn't particularly expensive (compared to their Intuos range for example) so if I had to pick I'd probably pick that over the Huion simply for the passive stylus that doesn't need recharging at all - you can just pick it up and know it will work. I would hope the driver would be stable and better from Wacom too with them being the market leader in this sort of stuff but you hear of folks having issues with their stuff at time. Some people do seem to have driver issues with some of the other tablet manufacturers.

    That said, I've been using a cheap-ish Parblo A610 for the last 3 and half years or so with my Mac and it's been great, although the stylus recharging is a small inconvenience and I'd plump for a passive pen option instead if I could choose again. I used to have a small Wacom Graphire 2 before the Parblo and both worked fine with ArtRage if that's any comfort.

    Edit:

    I don't know if it's still the case but Wacom drivers used to be more configurable when I had the Graphire - you could set up different settings on a per app basis which was great and is not something I've seen with the Parblo driver I have. I don't know id they still have such functionality but if they so it might also be an important thing to consider.

    I'm sorry I can't give a more accurate reply. Hopefully someone with a newer tablet by these brands might be able add something more concrete.
    Last edited by Bertrude; 11-30-2019 at 10:09 AM.

  3. #3
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    I will never buy Wacom again. There lack of on-going support for older products has left me very unhappy with them.

  4. #4
    Thanks Bertrude. I checked your stuff on DevianArt and I'm curious how sales doing ? Particularly Pear Apparent, Poppy Field, Siddhartha. Does ArtRage and Wacom pays for themself?
    Last edited by u3040; 12-01-2019 at 12:40 AM.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by kaveman View Post
    I will never buy Wacom again. There lack of on-going support for older products has left me very unhappy with them.
    Thanks kaveman, could you tell more: how old it is and after what time problems started, so that I could estimate after what time I should expect problems. As I understand they you started to get driver issues with newer software. I had such situation with Genius tablet, that's why I'm thinking about Wacom now.
    But we're not gonna have new versions of Windows, they're gonna update 10 forever, so probably we're shouldn't expect problems like those we had in the past.
    Last edited by u3040; 12-01-2019 at 12:41 AM.

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by p3000 View Post
    Thanks Bertrude. I checked your stuff on DevianArt and I'm curious how sales doing ? Particularly Pear Apparent, Poppy Field, Siddhartha. Does ArtRage and Wacom pays for themself?
    I believe using a drawing tablet to create digital art and paintings is essential if you want to replicate hand-drawn marks and create digitally in a free manner, whether you're doing it for fun or hoping to make a living from it. To that end, I think a tablet is well worth it whether it's an expensive option or a budget one. It's half the fun too and ArtRage is a pretty fun app to paint in

    Regarding my stuff on DeviantArt (DA), I didn't put them up there to sell or be bought as prints, so I can't really comment. I just put them on there to share. My goal was not to earn money from them, more just to try and enjoy painting and hopefully improve. The Pear Apparent and Siddhartha pictures were both done in ArtRage. the first was something folks in this forum were trying out (to replicate an oil painting one of the users had seen on youtube) and the other was done for one of the ArtRage competitions they used to run on DA. I miss those and miss seeing what other users were creating around the monthly theme - it was nice.

    The poppy field painting was an acrylic painting on a large-ish canvas. I was paid to paint that and it's hanging in someone's kitchen

    For the 'Bertie Needs a House' children's book I illustrated, all the illustrations in the book were done in ArtRage 4 or 5 (I swapped between them for different things). It was self-published with the author and sold modestly - I think we've sold about 80 odd copies to friends, familiy and work colleagues but not much beyond that. It's a very crowded marketplace and we didn't have a marketing budget or anything; just some social media posts and the odd posts in forums such as this. It was an interesting experience self-publishing through Amazon (it was called CreateSpace at the time) though and thankfully due to their print on demand production, we didn't have to pay out for any initial stock and weren't left will piles of inventory to store. They just take a cut of the purchase price when anyone orders a copy. There was very little financial return for all the effort that was put in but I'm glad we did it anyway and I hope someone has taken some enjoyement from it at some point.

    In answer to your question though - I just don't know. I guess it depends if people like your work and are willing to pay for it in a very busy global internet-equipped market. If you work in graphic design or illustration I think they're more tools in the kit and I would probably feel quite lost without a tablet now. I use it as a basic input device for the computer too but it works well in the other art and design apps I use. As for ArtRage, it's just a nice app to paint in and doesn't have too steep a learning curve. You're not inundated with too many options that paralyse your workflow. I enjoy using it (mostly) and my neice also seems to like using it too which is great to see. I'm not sure she'd find it so easy without the tablet though as I think it give the user that familiar method of making marks.

  7. #7
    Thanks Bertrude.

  8. #8
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    I'm not sure Windows 10 means that it won't be changing, it's just branding. MacOS is now 10.14 and every point update has major changes.

    I've had problems with slow updates on macOS since I got the Bamboo and nearly always had to hold back updating my OS until they updated the divers. Then about 3 years ago they just stopped updating them.

    I don't expect things to last forever but I would expect Software Drivers to be maintained as long as the hardware works. It's USB there is no reason not to, or make the drivers open source so the community can maintain them.

    I've moved on, to an iPad and Pencil, and there is no comparison.

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bertrude View Post
    I don't know if it's still the case but Wacom drivers used to be more configurable when I had the Graphire - you could set up different settings on a per app basis which was great and is not something I've seen with the Parblo driver I have.
    wacom merged the drivers for their intuos pro line and less expensive entry level intuos models some time ago, so they come with all sorts of per-app settings now.

    that is if your tablet is still supported by wacom.
    they tend to discontinue old models based on some arbitrary company-wide policy these days, which is bizarre because neither their actual driver code has been improved much, nor the pen tablets saw any groundbreaking improvement to warrant the phasing out of support.

  10. #10
    Then about 3 years ago they just stopped updating
    I see that Bamboo line first dated at 2011. 3 years ago - 2016. So 5 years of support. Not bad if so, if not mind slow updates. But could they know when Apple gonna make serious changes, probably not their fault.
    Don't know about days when you purchased iPad, but these days for the same or less money we can afford display-like 15 inch graphics tablets, like XP-Pen Artist 15.6 Tablet ($360) or Huion's models.
    Last edited by u3040; 12-02-2019 at 10:42 PM.

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