Toss up whether it wastes more of your time or your money.
I received this Cricut and ordered a bunch of blades and mats to go with it. I did the setup and successfully produced the test piece, so I chucked the boxes and left it all set up on my desk. The next time I tried to use it, to print 2 labels using the same vinyl sheet as the test cut, it printed one and when I tried to print the second the power light started blinking red. I have soft- and hard-reset the device, forced a firmware upgrade, and of course checked for any mechanical defects. Nothing. Same thing with a calibration of the knife blade using printer paper on the mat. Just a blinking red power light for every job.
Now, here's what I don't like about the *working* Cricut. The software is awful. The software must connect to the internet on startup, and whenever you perform arbitrary tasks. The software downloads updates on startup, without allowing the option to defer them - this may not sound like a big deal, but it takes time, and what if it happens while you are on the last 1GB of your data allowance? All designs MUST be saved to the cloud, or they cannot be saved at all - the "local" save option is actually "local and cloud". The software constantly nags you to buy a subscription for their silly club, and to pay right the right to use simple features that any other software would include. We're not talking clip art here; more like basic shapes and fonts. They'll be charging by line thickness soon.
Everything about using this machine is slow. Connecting to the network is slow. Downloading the app every time is slow. Communicating with the machine is slow. The software communicates with the machine a few times during the setup of a "print job", instead of doing a simple handshake and then sending the discrete job for the device to handle. There is no message display on the machine, and the buttons on the machine do nothing until the software enables them as part of a workflow in the software - go ahead, try to feed the material/mat when the software hasn't asked you to. Despite all of this micromanagement of the device by the software, there is no indication of what the error causing the blinking red light on the machine is - in fact the software does not even seem to be aware the machine has an error! If my team made this product, they would be fired, the lot of them.
There is not one aspect of this device that I can recommend. If I could get back the money I spent on this machine and the accessories and spend it on a competitor's product, I would do so in a heartbeat.
Bestätigter Kauf: JaArtikelzustand: Neu