Yeah, I found Wacom tablets to be no good for me, for the reason you describe. The iPad is definitely a better drawing device, as long as you don't care about pressure sensitivity.
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)
Personally I like the Wacom Tablet as an alternative to paper sketching. You get (almost) the immediacy of paper with the benefits of copy / paste, layers, undo, erase, etc
Traditional Wacom tablets are IMO awful. Some people do get used to them but not having direct feedback of what you've written just doesn't work naturally.
A tablet, especially one like the iPad Pro with the Pencil is much better but still doesn't work as well as just sketching on a piece of paper for me. I assume if I applied myself to using a tablet more though, I'd get used to it. Clearly people with a lot more drawing ability than myself can do great work on tablets.
Can you go into more detail about the benefits of using a Wacom tablet instead of a mouse? I know absolutely nothing about Wacom tablets, but this sounds interesting and I'd love to hear more.
In my personal experience a pure Wacom tablet always beats a tablet + stylus combo. In past 5(?) years since I've bought a Wacom Bamboo, none of the tablets I tried even came close, and I tried most of them, including the ones with a wacom stylus.
The problem all of them have, is that the surface is far to slippery and only the best I've tried came close in precision.
The main downside with a Wacom is that you don't have the display directly underneath the drawing area (but you get used to it very quickly) and that that the area is quite small (I'd at least go with a Intuos now).
I can't really see Adobes new product solving any problems in the tablet + stylus field.
In the end you obviously should try both and decide what suits you best, but I would choose my 5year old $70 Wacom over any tablet+stylus solution any day.
Yeah, Wacom tablets were/are great and terrible at the same time. I've used them on and off for a long time, and they really are great for drawing, but there's a learning curve to be sure. Actually I liked the older Wacoms better than some new ones I've tries out. The ancient "cursor" device was mouse-like, but used in absolute mode was great for some tasks where keeping it in the same place enabled keeping the pointer on the screen in a predictable spot.
Actually the newer touch/stylus screens on tablets like the MS Surface models I've used are harder for me to use with the stylus. Manipulating the stylus is harder due to parallax and the fact that the tool and hand covers up part of the screen. Just doesn't seem as "natural" to me as the old drawing tablet.
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