Depends on what you plan to do with it. For drawing and sketching, inking, texturing, sculpting and no-frills painting, a bamboo works just fine. You need an intuos only for hardcore digital painting, cause then the extra features and senstivity can be real nice to work with. Or if you want a real big tablet cause IIRC bamboos only come in mid-small sizes.

Also I would suggest getting a larger bamboo over a smaller Intuos.