I've been using a WACOM Graphire4 ClassicXL for a while now and quite like it. However, I've just been borrowing it and the time has come to buy my own (or get one for my birthday) and I've found a decent price here for the same one, but also for an WACOM A6 Bamboo tablet with a higher resolution at half the price (but obviously smaller working area).

Classic XL:
http://www.tablet4u.co.uk/product/en/graphire4-classic-xl.html
Bamboo:
http://www.tablet4u.co.uk/product/en/bamboo-tablet.html

My friend (Ishi) bought the Bamboo a while ago and obviously it's been working great for him, so I've been wondering if I should save a few pennies and get that instead. I'm quite tempted by the less cumbersome design but I'm not sure how much of an issue working space would be if I got it.

Anybody got any revelations they had with moving down from A5 to A6 size, or the other way around? Or anybody who's been able to test out both?

Cheers.

I've got a Bamboo myself, got it for Xmas. A lot of people have them for the very reason you stated. I say go for it, you won't be sorry. The pen comes with an erasure. And the old tablet I had was actually smaller, so I went up a size.

Still, to get the higher end Intuous....... *sigh*

this size is going to make a bigger difference than the resolution. you probably won't even notice that resolution difference. (resolution on a tablet is VERY different and almost completely unrelated to resolution on a screen---for comparison, my screen, which is pretty high resolution for its size is 57 lines/cm, so "worse" by a factor of over 10)

I personally much prefer my 6x8 inch tablet to my old 4x5, but that's personal preference. I use a tablet pc now (roughly 9.75 x 7.25 inches) and it's even better.

I ended up ordering the medium size (A5) Bamboo... hopefully the best of both worlds... we'll see how it turns out.

EDIT: Just got it today and I love it! Drawing on it seems more natural and less like you are drawing on a plastic covering, which is very nice, but the eraser end also feels more like an eraser which doesn't feel quite so nice. Other than that, it came with ArtRage 2.5 which also appears to be quite fun to use and more intuitive than Corel Painter Essentials. I sketched this out in a couple of minutes from my post-it note holder...

http://images.jrnetwork.co.uk/other/pooh.jpg

So yeh... thumbs up for the new Wacom series :)