MonoPrice tablet monitor a viable Wacom Cintiq competitor?

Comments ⁷

1. George Ford

   My wife bought me a ten-inch tablet for Christmas last year for like $50. I had been crying for years about a Cintiq, but the $200+ price tag kept me from getting one.

   I really like the Monoprice tablet. It’s large, relatively easy to use, and I don’t have to be afraid to try new things or treat it like a precious newborn. 🙂

   I totally recommend trying it, especially if you’re new to doing anything with a tablet and want to get your feet wet. I’m more than satisfied with mine, and I cannot wait to get a hold of this new interactive one.

2. Mike Cope

   Provided they don’t get slapped with a patent lawsuit, this looks promising.

3. Dale Cipperley

   I have also been following Frenden’s blog. I believe Monoprice does offer a 30 day return on this product if you’re concerned about it being the tool for you.

4. Cris Pruneri

   Well, it is very tempting. On one side.
   On the other side, Monoprice own site has a poll with the satisfaction results from its buyers, and it is just average.

   I would like to see someone else aside from Frenden try this tablet and reviewing it, and more than one people. On one side, Frenden received a pre-sale example of the Monitor, probably a very well tested unit and not just the first on top of the heap (the guy has “launched” the Yiynova 19″ last year, so it would have been crazy from monoprice to leave it to chance).

   On the others, most buyers don’t really realise how “fragile” are these systems… they rely on pretty “arcane” electromagnetic operations akin to receiving electromagnetic noise from the ambient, so that literally everything can mess them up and make them appear as not working properly.

   Being one of the crazy guys who built a tablet monitor themselves – a 15″, on top of a Wacom tablet – I know from experience that an inadequate grounding, faulty power units, problems in the pc graphic board, other unshielded USB devices connected on the same USB branch and even the hard disks working too much can ALL affect the ability of of these machine to work properly, even whey do not really have any issue.

5. mac mcrae

   Cris it is $400 not $3000 and it has a 30 day return policy. How difficult a decision could it possibly be to try it out. I have owned two 21ux and they both had jittery lines in Photoshop, terrible parallax and issues with drawing on the edge of the screen. Also about electromagnetic interference – it is a digitizer bolted onto an LCD screen. It isn’t freaking rocket science. Monoprice has great wacom intuos style tablets for $50 that have no trouble with electromagnetic interference. What I think we are witnessing here is a flood of fud from wacom and other competitors who are mad at monoprice for undercutting them on price. I mean what would you do if someone started selling your recently expired patented tech for less than a quarter of what you sell it for?

6. Cris pruneri

   @ Mac

   I agree, bulding a Cintiq is not rocket science.

   In fact, I built myself another such machine, a 21″ (more or less, the same specs as the old CintiQ 21 UX – for half the cost asked for the last Used CintiQ 21 I saw sold in ebay; for what I need, the Intuos 4 was an overkill).

   All the same, it is not that straightforward either.

   – Some of the DIYist suspect that the working frequencies of the tablets are kept within the range of critical frequencies used in current screens, just to avoid everybody buying an used Intuos 4 xl and placing an LCD on top of it (note: I read that the AOC 2243 should be a good match), instead of buying the Cintiq 22 HD (for, in all, a third of the price or less).

   Apparently, the Monoprice tablets are re-branded Huion GT190 (rev 2), sold at a lower price and, given some of the defects lamented by their owners, there was some R&D still to do in the first (the infamous calibration problem of the first drivers, for example,look a lot like what I expect from someone trying to run a calibration routine for a 1280×800, 2540 LPI – the old GT190 driver – on a 1440×900, 5080 LPI system… you calibrate the pen to stay , toughly, inside a quarter of your screen).

   They are sorting the initial chinks out, though, and new buyers seems to be happier.

7. Dave Stephens

   I, too, had jittery lines in Photoshop – I simply had to completely delete the Cintiq driver and re-install it and POOF – those jittery lines have never returned. And now that over a year has passed since this post, I have hear plenty of good reviews of Monoprice’s tablet – it’s great bang for little buck BUT Wacom is STILL the best and if you can afford them, they have no equal, but who knows what the next few years will bring….?