Are Wacom Tablets Overpriced?

I don’t like to be the guy who complains that everything is overpriced so this is more me wondering out loud. I was forced to trade in my old Wacom digital tablet for the newer Intuos and plunked down $229.00 plus associated taxes/shipping costs. Actually, the old one was still working but I was down to my last nib on the pen and it was wearing away fast. A set of new nibs is something like sixty dollars  from Wacom and I figured I might as well put that money towards a new Wacom Intuos digital tablet.

But touchscreen tablets (computers essentially, not the kind you necessarily use to draw) such as the Kindle Fire start at $199.99. Now I know there is some discussion on that being actually pretty cheap and Amazon plans to make it up with Ebook sales (which is a great marketing strategy) so maybe an E-Reader with advanced features isn’t the best example. On BestBuy.com I see BlackBerry Playbook on sale for $199.99 also and I didn’t see an associated wireless contract subsidizing so I assume that is the actual price. Normal retail for it and Samsung Galaxy Tab is $449.99. Taking $449 as a base price if we split it in half we get $225.00 for a device that maybe does half as much. But Wacom tablets don’t even do half of what a normal touchscreen can do, do they? Intuos tablets have some mouse-like controls such as zoom and scroll and you can create shortcuts with the six buttons I guess, but it just seems like for the price there should be more considering how much you get with a touchscreen tablet.

In fact, I’m thinking that going forward, touchscreens may have digital drawing apps that you could buy a screen cover and a pen for and avoid Wacom altogether. I already see that the Galaxy Tab has something like this according to this post. Wacom is in a specialty market for professional artists and they’re not going to sell as many basic touchscreens made for the public, but I was a bit disappointed when I started using Intuos and not much had seemed to change or improve from my last Wacom tablet. If I wanted to pay a larger chunk of cash there are some more interesting Wacom tablets like the Interactive Displays at around $1800 bucks or Cintiq where you draw right on the screen for $2500 bucks but again, the price!?

With touchscreen tablets becoming the norm and with art apps available, is Wacom going to last at these prices? An art student is usually dirt poor. A budget digital tablet with the ability to paint/draw on screen would make sense for them to gain market share from the beginning of an artist’s career. Possibly the ability to record pen strokes is expensive technology, however, the more I’ve tested out touchscreen tablets I’m becoming more skeptical. I think Wacom is in trouble if they don’t start bumping up their game.