Hardware for digital illustration

[AsgardsPrincess]

Hi
I've been watching some skillshare videos mainly on surface pattern design.

I'm using a 4 year old Asus laptop and an 8 year old wacom bamboo tablet with GIMP and Inkscape, scanning in hand drawn images.
My laptop is super fast for browsing the Internet but not so good dealing with large images.

Everyone on skillshare seems to be using ipad pros, a mac and the full Adobe suite. Fair play if that's your job but I make patterns for redbubble/as a hobby (wishing it was my job) so it's not economically logical to drop £2000+ on hardware and software!

My question is, because I like the look of how they use the ipad Pro with apple pen, what is a good alternative to this; a cheaper tablet with pen? I'm talking about less than £200. I don't mind buying second hand if it's a few years old. My setup is OK but it's a bit slow and working directly onto a tablet looks alot easier.
Thanks so much

 

[Wardy]

I think you'll struggle to find anything decent for £200 for what you want to do, unless it's a properly refurbished one.

I'm no expert on laptops, but 4 years doesn't sound too old. Maybe free up some space on it and try something like Affinity Designer which is fairly cheap for the results you can get on it.