Making educational videos with a drawing tablet

Drawing tablets are heavily used for creating educational content. For example you've probably seen the Khan Academy videos and those are created with a drawing tablet.

Easy tablet choices

For this you want high reliability and durability and you DO NOT need to spend a lot of money buying a fancy tablet. And for those reasons I'll keep the recommendations short:

What features you need

  • Pressure support - Will help you strokes look more natural. All drawing tablets have this pressure support.

  • Tilt - not needed for education use. More of an artist thing.

  • Tablet buttons (aka. ExpressKeys) - I think they can come in very useful for people. For some people these are critical. No harm in getting them, you can always disable them.

  • Size - Medium or Small. I always recommend medium. Even though some people are OK with small tablets, I do see a far number of people say the small size makes their hand feel cramped.

My recommendations

Pen tablets (no screen)

  • One by Wacom Medium (CTL-672)

    • Pressure: YES

    • Tilt: NO

    • Tablet Buttons: NO

    • Wireless: NO

  • Wacom Intuos Medium (CTL-6100 or CTL-6100WL)

    • Pressure: YES

    • Tilt: NO

    • Tablet buttons: YES

    • Wireless: Only the CTL-6100WL supports wireless

Pen displays (have a screen)

  • XP-Pen Artist 12 GEN2 (CD120FH)

    • Pressure: YES

    • Tilt: YES

    • Tablet buttons: YES

    • Wireless: NO

  • XP-Pen Artist 13 GEN2 (CD130FH)

    • Pressure: YES

    • Tilt: YES

    • Tablet buttons: YES

    • Wireless: NO

  • Wacom One GEN1 (DTC-133)

    • Pressure: YES

    • Tilt: YES

    • Tablet buttons: NO

    • Wireless: NO

Which tablet does Sal Khan use?

Sal Khan uses a Wacom Intuos Pro Medium for his videos. That is an AMAZING tablet, but honestly overkill. You can get by with a much less expensive tablet.

Which specific model of Intuos Pro he is using?

It does NOT look to be the latest model of Intuos Pro Medium (PTH-660). You can tell this because in one of his videos he shows the tablet and I can see some things that clearly mark it as an older tablet.

  • The pen does not look like the Wacom Pro Pen 2 that comes with the PTH-660

  • The USB-cable connects with a thicker end and is not the L-shaped connector that comes PTH-660

  • The back of the tablet has the older Wacom branding.

Note that the Khan Academy has this document What software program/equipment is used to make Khan Academy videos? In that doc, they say he uses a Wacom Bamboo tablet. I suspect this probably was true at some point, but he clearly no longer uses it.

Resources

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