Medion Graphics Tablet

[radar]

Hi,

here we go again, a review of an Aldi product

At the recent PMA, I was eyeing the new Wacom Intuos4 Tablets but my wallet didn't like them. Given that I hadn't used one previously, I was reluctant to spend that kind of money. Aldi to the rescue: they have 12x9 tablet that they sell for $79. Sure it isn't a Wacom Intuos but the price is also a lot less.

I got one and found that it doesn't have Mac drivers, only XP and Vista. It is a rebadged tablet and Adesso have the same one so I downloaded the drivers from:
http://www.adesso.com/tablet_drivers.asp

There you go, got the tablet working on my Mac OS X 10.5.7. It has a nice little application to customise the various touch-keys on the tablet.

Seems to work fine so far. There are also a number of applications for Windows, I may use those when I run Parallels on my Mac.

Next I'll try it out with Capture NX2 and Photoshop.

Just a quick review in case some of you may want to get one at Aldi. Not sure until when they will have them on sale for.

Cheers,

André

[photoaffinity]

fantastic, i bought one of these when it first came out in 2004(ish), and it lasted me ages until i lost it in a box of stuff during a move.

i will go pick up one this afternoon.

thanks!

[surenj]

That is really cheap! Does it have pressure effects?

I thought my Wacom Bamboo 6X8 [highly recommended by the way] was cheap at $250 odd...

[Matt. K]

Thanks for the heads up Radar!

[radar]

That is really cheap! Does it have pressure effects?

I'm new to this but the specs say that it has "Pen Pressure: 1024 levels"

HTH, André

[lightning]

In Aldi @ southland (Melbourne) today they had them for $79 !!

I'm running tiger 10.4.11 on an imac hoping it will work

I think from a forum some time ago people were saying a downside was batteries in the pen, that was about a year ago maybe it's changed ??

[photograham]

I have also just bought one and hope to install it and try this weekend. An acquintance in another camera club bought one a good couple of years ago and thought it was OK.
It's really a cheap price to try something new and see if it is workable with what I do.

[spoken4]

What a great heads up! I bought one from Aldi about 2 years ago for my Lin/Win box and had not really investigated it for my new iMac.
Wrapped to get it working with the suggested drivers. Thanks heaps!

[aswcheng]

If it's the Medion P82012 "Design USB Graphics Pad" we are talking about here, they are selling it for $59 at the moment (not sure when the sale ends though). The ads did say the original price is $79.

Cheers.

Edit : I'm surprised that Ubuntu 9.04 (Linux) actually work with this tablet out of the box without the need for any drivers.

[SuperJT]

If it's the Medion P82012 "Design USB Graphics Pad" we are talking about here, they are selling it for $59 at the moment (not surer when the sale ends though). The ads did say the original price is $79.
Cheers.

Indeed. The back page of the current catalogue has it as a "Clearance Item" so the price has dropped to $59. I just picked one up from Aldi at Strathfield (Meadowbank were out).

[lightning]

so Radar now that you have been using it for a couple of weeks what do you think ?? thumbs up or down ?

[SuperJT]

My 6 year old is using it right now with a paint program and is having an absolute blast.

I've tried it with Photoshop and it works very well. I think achieving proficiency is a different issue. Obviously doing stuff with a keyboard and mouse is completely different so getting used to this is hard.

I'm guessing that having some drawing talent (which I do not have) would help. But overall, for $59 I'm not going to complain - I think it's excellent for a beginner who wants to experiment and give this a try.

[aswcheng]

Obviously doing stuff with a keyboard and mouse is completely different so getting used to this is hard.

I agree, it takes a while to get used to a tablet. And while this particular one doesn't seem to be of the same quality as the professional tablets, it's a great starter at $59. If only I have some talent as an artist.. )

Cheers.