You'd also need to account for the time it'd take to set up and learn to use a Wacom tablet though, which is likely longer than the time it'd take to tape a pencil and a CD to a laptop. This just shows the Wacom tablet is even more expensive.
Wacom has been making cheap tablets for ages, I started with a $100 Graphire back around 2000, the specs and name for the low end tablet has changed but you can still get a tablet with a small working area for about US$100. You can get last year’s entry-level tablet for even less; if you have any kind of art friend connections you could probably find one for the cost of shipping.
There has been no lack of cheap non-screen drawing tablets, and I really think that there’s nothing even resembling a whole generation of digital artists who done exist because of the lack of screen tablets. There’s a FUCKTON of pro artists out there who were enabled by a cheap drawing tablet and a pirated copy of (insert art program here).
FYI, lots of freelance and professional digital artists who draw for a living are using the $50-150 models which don't have displays to great success. I have one of those (old Wacom Bamboo Capture, no longer sold) and it's more natural than it sounds to make drawing motions with your hand that are rendered on your computer monitor.
Unless you have reason to believe the person who made the Christmas request expects a present with $300-$5000+ price tag or specifically wants one with a display, they're probably thinking about the screenless ones (especially if they don't already have a drawing tablet). In that case, they'll likely be very happy with any Wacom model - Wacom Intuos is currently the popular one.
As for the price and functionality - the really expensive ones are targeted towards full-time corporate professionals who sit in a room and churn out art all day, and their company will happily shell out $5k for top-tier equipment for them (the artist version of a Bloomberg Terminal haha). The $300-500 ones with screens are priced like regular tablets because that's kind of what they are, just specialized for drawing with a pen. The $50-150 ones focus on the pen input itself and don't deal with the complications of having a screen, making them simple tools that enable digital drawing (it's much more tedious to draw with a mouse than a pen). Their price is the baseline for this category of tooling, as even those basic tablets have a variety of features like pressure sensitivity, high precision, side buttons, etc. which mostly justify the price tag.
I wish Wacom had more competition and that touchscreen laptops were cheaper. I believe a lot could be done with them if they could be brought down to the general consumer's price level.
I would rather spend $350-$400 more on a touchscreen for a new laptop.
I am not denying the value of a Wacom tablet, I'm simply considering the teachers' salaries, and comparing the cost of a $100 Wacom tablet with a free CD and pencil plus a $1 notebook.
I know. I think that for many people an iPad (or a surface) are better drawing tablets than Wacoms (cheaper, lighter, better screens) and can very well be used for other things than content consumption. (of course Wacom tablets have their benefits too)
No wonder it's cheaper - N-trig instead of Wacom. (I'm not commenting on the technical merits of either choice, just that one tends to be cheaper than the other.)
A low-end Wacom is, IMO, probably worth trying. I've been using one in combination with MyPaint[0] for a few years to do quick sketches and cartoons. It definitely hasn't replaced paper for me, but it's a good way to get some of the spontaneity and expressiveness of pen-and-ink into the machine.
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