Is 13 Inch Display Drawing Tablet Too Small?

Which Size Graphics Tablet Should You Buy?

Graphics tablets of three different sizes with orange question marks around them

A graphics tablet with a pressure level-sensitive stylus is an essential purchase for many creative professionals. Once you decide to buy 1, a big question you might have is which size you should get: pocket-size, medium, or large? The answer is not ever what you might remember.

I'll be talking about graphics tablets that supervene upon your mouse or trackpad, non the pen displays that let you depict directly on the screen or standalone tablets such every bit the Apple iPad. Graphics tablets deserve a closer wait because the size relationship between a graphics tablet and the screen is less direct, merely all the same affects how you lot work.

Moving Around the Screen

Yous move around the screen differently with a graphics tablet than you practise with a mouse or trackpad. A mouse uses relative positioning, while a graphics tablet uses absolute positioning. What does that mean? With a mouse or trackpad, when you motion the pointer it starts where you last released the mouse or lifted your finger off the trackpad. In other words, it moves relative to its last position. With a stylus, when you motility the pointer, it starts from the accented coordinates on the tablet that represent to the display. This ways that if you position the stylus at the top correct corner of the tablet's agile surface area, the pointer instantly moves to the top right corner of the screen no thing where you last left it. You'll often be moving across the entire surface of a tablet just to movement the pointer around the brandish, and then with a big tablet your hand may travel much farther than it would with a mouse or trackpad.

Continue in mind that the active expanse of a tablet is typically smaller than the area that appears to be the drawing surface. For case, on Wacom Intuos Pro tablets, yous'll find four lite corner marks that indicate the active area of the dark tablet surface.

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Controlling a Big Screen with a Small Tablet

If you're new to graphics tablets, you might wonder if a bigger display needs a bigger tablet, just most graphics tablets take a much higher resolution than your display. Calculator displays typically don't exceed 3000 lines of resolution across their entire width or height, only Wacom says their Intuos Pro tablets have a resolution of 5080 lines in just one inch. So, at to the lowest degree in terms of the hardware, even a minor tablet has more than than plenty resolution to control every pixel on a typical 27-inch diagonal display (2560 × 1440 pixels).

Computer display mapped onto active area of graphics tablet

A tablet of whatever size can map its active surface area to command all of a large display.

Working with a Big Graphics Tablet

If you lot create art on newspaper and canvas or you prefer to create digital art with gestures that move your entire arm, a large graphics tablet might be right for you. If y'all think yous'll be using a graphics tablet to trace sketches or other physical art, the big tablet size is more likely to be big plenty to hold an entire sheet of paper.

Just the large size comes at a toll, and it isn't just that the Intuos Pro Large costs virtually twice equally much every bit the Small size. Large tablets are a lot bigger than a mousepad, so you have to clear off a lot of desk space to make room for i. The large Wacom Intuos Pro tablet is 16.8 inches past 11.two inches. A tablet that large can end up competing with your keyboard for desk space, particularly if your keyboard has a numeric keypad. If you'll be using a large graphics tablet constantly, you might decide to move your keyboard to an under-desk keyboard tray.

Working with a Minor Graphics Tablet

The other end of the tablet size continuum is the pocket-size tablet. If you lot travel a lot or like to work at coffee shops and libraries, a small tablet provides the most portability. It'southward easy to drop into a bag with your laptop, non just because it's small, but because information technology's apartment. For a laptop brandish or a display with pocket-sized resolution such as 1920 × 1080 pixels, the small tablet size may be all yous need.

While digital painting and other art involving arm-sized gestures is usually best done with a large tablet, a small tablet is often more sufficient for layout or when near of your graphics editing involves control points, transformation handles, and filters. For the times when you want to work with more precision, you tin simply zoom into the document.

Working with a Medium Graphics Tablet

Although a small graphics tablet may accept more than enough resolution to precisely command the arrow on displays of many sizes, that doesn't hateful it'southward just as easy for a human to position the pointer. Every bit the tablet size goes down and display size goes upwardly, you may find it harder to precisely command the pointer considering you have to make tinier moves with your manus. If yous want to more easily control precise pointer moves but the large tablet size is just too much for your arm and your available desk space, that'south when you'll want to look at the medium tablet size. While the medium size Wacom Intuos Pro tablet is yet portable, it's longer than a MacBook Pro, so it won't travel quite as hands equally the small tablet size. Only if it's going to live out its life on your desk, that'south not a trouble.

Tailoring a Tablet of Any Size

The software that comes with Wacom tablets lets you assign how the tablet's active expanse maps to your brandish. For example, if you need the big active expanse of the large tablet for your artwork but it's besides large for when you're using the computer for spider web browsing and full general office tasks, you tin can apply the Wacom software to map only a few square inches of the tablet to your entire display. If you have multiple displays, you can tell the tablet to control just i display, which should brand precise edits easier. When yous'd rather have the stylus bear more like a mouse or trackpad, you can set the tablet to relative positioning instead of absolute.

Graphics tablets frequently have shortcut buttons (called ExpressKeys past Wacom), popular-upwardly menus, or features like the Wacom Impact Band that help you curlicue or alter settings similar opacity without having to attain for the keyboard. You can customize what those features exercise in the Wacom tablet software. If you like using them, one advantage of the medium and large tablet sizes is that they have more ExpressKeys.

Making Your Final Decision

A good approach for making your tablet size decision would exist to offset from the medium size. Go smaller if you need the portability or are brusque on desk space or budget, and become larger if you'll frequently be using large arm gestures to create digital drawings or paintings, tracing whole sheets of artwork, or desire additional shortcut keys on the tablet.