Just bought myself a Cameo to play with out of interest. Thinking back over the years I can only remember a handful of times when I needed to cut any wider than 12" anyway. I've used Roland machines and really liked them, several other large format machines etc. so this looked liked an interesting comparison test :-)
Ordered through MDP, £224+vat free next day delivery. Delivered quickly although a slight surcharge because of my location offshore. Emails were answered quickly enough, ordering process not too painful.
Unboxing I found a load of small sign vinyl cuts that I hadn't ordered, maybe these come as standard. I ordered a selection of garment vinyl to get me started anyway.
Setting up the machine was straight forward, much the same as a printer. Initial thoughts on the machine, good build quality, somewhat noisy but not overly. Great, small, footprint, would sit on top of the PC box if needed so finding a home for this is certainly easy.
The blade/holder simply drop into place and a twist locks it in. Blade has 10 settings and a small tool is provided to twist change the depth, very easy.
It took me a little while to work out how the vinyl loaded, the rollers move across to grip but are a little fiddly at first. Once I'd got the hang of it...and realised it loads from the front not the back! it all seemed pretty straight forward. Cutting area is approx. 11.6" wide by up to 10' long. I've tested with small offcuts of vinyl so far.
Set the blade to it's lowest, number 1 and away I went. Sent a few test cuts through. As mentioned, it's not the quietest machine but not loud enough to bother me. Everything cut very well, I was very surprised how well tiny detail cut, something I've struggled with on very expensive machines in the past. Speed can be adjusted through the software/machine panel. I put this on it's fastest and it's perfectly adequate for vinyl.
The software provided with the cutter is excellent. You can buy a plug in for CorelDraw/Illustrator for around £25. I downloaded the 14 trial of this as they recommend doing so to check it works. You send the design through a plug in which again works well but personally I'm finding it as easy to export as a .dxf file into the provided software.
All in all a very smart looking machine, I'm sure it will pay for itself quickly and I'm more inclined to use it because it's easily accessible and quick to work with. I wouldn't want to use one of these machines for heavy duty use but for daily short runs etc. it'll be just fine.
The cutter has an optical eye for cutting using registration marks, should be very useful when I come to test transfer papers.