Entry Level Pen Tablets: Making the Artist's PC-Life Easier

Final Words

If you are wondering whether this hardware can replace the clutter at your specific PC desk, perhaps more insight is required. For the artists, this tablet may not be a replacement for anything more than your mouse. This technology is not quite detailed and versatile to compete with a pen and paper yet. If you are a gamer, you should probably know that neither tablet is fast enough (response-wise) for first person shooters, so you'll want to keep your mouse and keyboard combo.

For general use in the office, it seems this tablet hardware might mostly just offer something with which to wow the guy in the next cubicle. The extra functions that the Graphire3 pen has in Word and Excel are more of a perk than a reason to buy the whole tablet.

So then, are they worth the price? Aiptek's Hyperpen 8000U needs a lot of work before being truly worth its $100 price tag. The 12000U model could also use some tweaking, and presently seems a little too expensive for its abilities. As far as the Wacom tablet is concerned, there are many people that would find the Graphire3 technology worth even more than its cost. The Graphire3 is the only one of these three tablets that could replace a mouse accurately and offer many more uses. So, to answer the question of whether it is worth one hundred dollars, perhaps you should first decide which of the above categories you fall into. As an artist who uses computer technology, there is significantly more reason to lay down this amount of money than someone who is simply looking for a new toy.