So, you're looking for a drawing tablet. Maybe you're a beginner looking for something that you
know is going to last and isn't going to break the bank. Well maybe, just maybe, this 15 year
old Intuos 3 tablet is the option you should be looking at. Let's put it to the test shall we.
Hello, my name is Ryan. I'm an artist painting under the name Eyekoo and welcome to my studio,
and the first drawing tablet review video that I'm doing for drawyourweapon.com.
It's a website I started last year with the aim of sharing information and inspiration
with young digital artists looking to make a start in their journey. You know, one of the
questions I often see asked is i'm on a budget, I need a cheap drawing tablet that's gonna last,
you know, something that's not gonna have to be replaced in the next few months or even the next
year or two. And often i'll see the likes of Huion or XP-Pen recommended. These are more affordable
alternatives to Wacom and i use an XP-Pen Deco Pro myself but another option to consider are actually
the older Wacom Intuos models that we're going to be looking at over the next couple of videos
in this one though we're focusing on the intuos3 the tablet was released in 2006 and 15 years later
i still see people recommending it still using it and i'm quite excited to give it a test run today
now the first thing to point out about this is that it's a screenless pen tablet it has to be
plugged into a computer to work and you can be looking at your computer screen while drawing
on a different surface this can take some time to get used to but with a bit of practice your hand
eye coordination clicks and it becomes like using a mouse and that's that's all these tablets are
it's a fancy mouse if you have a computer that can run digital painting software already then this is
also going to be your cheapest start to getting into digital painting and drawing i was lucky
enough to find this tablet going for about 40 on a secondhand marketplace and i've seen other people
have similar experiences as well so supposed to keep your eyes open check those marketplaces and
you might be able to find quite a bargain i also found it in 204 for about 45 dollars in really
good condition so you could get lucky anyway let's open up the box inside you've got the
tablet itself of course this is the in 203 medium which is eight by six inches the smallest one they
brought out in this range was four by six inches and the largest being 19 by 12 inches you get this
five button mouse which probably not going to use all that much a battery free grip pin with
an eraser on the back two buttons along the side really comfortable to use you get a pen holder and
some spare nibs if you prefer a different feel for your pen and there's a driver cd as well but it's
best to just download the latest driver straight from the wacom website the pen has got 1024 levels
of pressure sensitivity now if you compare that with a lot of the pens and tablets today that have
about 8 000 plus levels this 1000 might seem like very little but in practice it's actually
more than enough you have a really good range you can get live strokes heavy strokes everything in
between and the initial activation is really good as well it's got tilt support so depending on your
brush settings the brush is going to behave in different ways according to the angle of
your pen and on the tablet you've got four express keys and a touch strip on either side the 4x6 inch
only has it on one side but all the bigger models have it on both so whether you're left-handed or
right-handed it's not going to matter you're going to be able to take full advantage of
those convenient express keys these can also be customized in the driver settings and you can set
different presets for different programs as well so if you use different shortcuts in your drawing
software and your animation software these will automatically switch over you can also adjust the
pressure curve the active monitor if you're using multiple screens all the usual stuff so with that
out of the way let's get onto a drawing test and see what it's like to work with this thing
okay so i've got critter 5 beta open over here the the beta was released a couple of weeks ago
and just been testing it out a couple of new features anyway uh when i open up a new file
generally i like to start with a gray background sort of mid-tone to work on
top of makes it a bit easier when it comes to putting putting lighting on on my pieces
but that's not really a big deal for this um just to explain briefly how i've got the tablet set up
i've got this allocated just to my one monitor so these these corners all line up with the corners
of my main monitor and doesn't stretch over both i've left the pressure settings standard
and i've just slightly customized the buttons so the touch strip over here i've just said to
adjust the zoom these two buttons are for just increasing and decreasing the size of my brush
now the difference here as opposed to using my keyboard is that i have to push the button down
for each increment whereas with the keyboard i can just push and hold to adjust the size of the brush
but no big deal i've also got a sort of click to drag function here because i often work on quite
big canvases and zoomed in to put in some details so that's quite useful to have and then also good
to have your control z especially if you're doing or trying to do like long flowing confident lines
it helps to have that control z because you'll likely have to do it a couple of times
and that's about it so let's get on to a bit of a test here
make the brush a bit smaller i've got a brush selected that is set to change with
the brush size i'm sorry with the amount of pressure so the more pressure i had the more
the more weight the line has you can also have that with an opacity setting
so the lighter your strokes the lighter the line and as you apply more pressure
that's going to change let's go back to that size one make make the brush a bit smaller
do some quick lines all looks pretty good pretty smooth i guess you can do a bit of
kind of cross-hatching sort of vibe um if i go really slowly let's see what happens
there's a little bit of wave there but that's mostly just because i have
quite an unsteady hand but i'll try out the ruler and see see what that looks like
yeah nice and smooth i quite like that um no issues with this go to plenty of range remember it
is only 1024 levels of of pressure sensitivity but you can get all those sort of line weights from
from really thin and light to too dark and heavy without any issue if you prefer to push
really lightly and still get quite a heavy stroke then you can just adjust that in your
in your tablet settings so i'm going to move over now to to photoshop and i'm going to do a
bit of a sketch see what it's like working in there
okay
okay so what's the verdict do i think the in 203 is a good drawing tablet for a beginner
i'm going to say absolutely yes and if you can find one at a good price that's still in good
condition you're not going to be disappointed with this at all it's got all the features you need
i don't see why it wouldn't be a good option for a beginner or even a more experienced user as well
even if i had to pay probably double the price for this i still think it would be
quite a good purchase and it's good knowing that a tablet like this is 15 years old and people are
still using them they're reliable and actually if you're using one please let me know in the
comments tell me what size tablet you're using and now i'm going to carry on with that painting and
get started with the next drawing tablet review we're going to be looking at the 204 so if you
found this video interesting please hit that like button i'd appreciate it and if you want to know
when those videos come out then you know where the subscribe button is and until then happy drawing