I recently bought the One by Wacom pen tablet and I have been using for just a day, but I could already notice the nib is wearing off (looks flattened on the side that was exposed to the tablet surface during usage). And the tablet came with only 3 replacement nibs. At such a wear rate I feel it will only last 1-2 months before I have to buy new nibs.
I don’t generally do a lot of digital painting or sculpting. But I do quite a bit of texture painting and work in Affinity Photo for post-production. I am worried this tablet will only add to my expenses.
Curious to know how long your nibs last. Would be great if you guys could share about the brand and model you are using and the type of usage you do.
I have Wacom Intuos Pen, had a Bamboo One before. It wears FAST. The cheaper wacoms have a nib that wears off, more expensive models doesn’t. They are basically forcing you to pay them more money for that overpriced pieces of plastic. Luckily you can replace it with almost anything that’s the same diameter as these nibs.
Ive been using XP pen 15", the nib is still good after light to medium use for more than a year. I think its a great product but theres an annoying pen nib to screen offset ( around 5mm). Maybe its just in mine.
You can use a 1.65 mm trimmer line as a cheap replacement. There’s plenty of examples on google.
The plastic nibs on my Intuos 4 don’t really seem to noticably shrink in length and I’ve used it a long time. When I used a cheaper wacom then the nibs wore down pretty quickly. The other fancier nibs can last only few days on the original tablet surface. I have a plastic thing taped to the tablet to alter the feel of the surface as I don’t really like the feeling of wacoms and that has seemed to increase the lifetime of a nib a lot too.
When you go to the store, make sure that the plastic in the folder is adequate. When you slide your hand over the plastic, it should slide smoothly and should not adhere to the plastic, especially in summer. I have noticed that the black/colored part of those folders is useful, not the transparent part. It has to be a type of plastic that is somewhat opaque on one side, not glossy part.
You can attach the plastic to the tablet with a pair of rubber bands, or some other way you can think of.
Looks like there’s a lot of politics around these wacom tablets. From your suggestions, I ve applied for a return. Planning to buy a better tablet with more durable nibs some other time.
Thanks for your answers guys!
By the way, @123ERTYY, is yours a display tablet? If yes, have you used the normal tablets (without a display) of the brand you are using? Curious to know how long nibs last with those.
Now that you mentioned it, i havent used much normal tablets. But from the feel- i think its a possibility that it wouldnt last long in normal ones. and Yes i do have a screen in mine.