Silhouette Portrait 3, White

This thing is straight up malicious. Truly, from the bottom of my heart, I despise this machine. I'm used to working with sub-par or stubborn technology; I worked in a digital photo lab for a while and had to deal with their big Epson poster printer, which was an absolute nightmare beast. I've had numerous bad home printers, I've struggled through classwork on awful all-in-one school desktop computers, I had an Alcatel smartphone in 2014... I've experienced pretty much all that can be awful in everyday technology at least a few times, because I'm poor. No piece of tech has ever betrayed or frustrated me or straight up gaslit me the way this thing has. It's pushed me to the limits of my sanity. The only reason I have not smashed this worthless piece of garbage into bits with a hammer is because, again, I'm poor, and I need it to make stickers for my shop. I swear to god this thing has caused me genuine psychological harm. Sometimes it works fine with no problems. Other times, it fights me every step of the way, for no discernible reason. I can have one really good, productive day, and then under EXACTLY the same conditions the next day, exactly the same files, exactly the same paper, exactly the same setup in exactly the same lighting-- suddenly, it won't read registration marks, it won't cut accurately, it won't do anything right. I give up, I put it away, I come back again when I'm forced to by things like Needing Money To Live, dreading another day spent literally sobbing at my craft table from stress, and mysteriously, it works again. Every time I think I have the rules nailed down, every time I think I figure out, every single time I think, ah, I just needed more experience, I'm good at troubleshooting it now-- it finds a new way to misbehave that wastes hours of my time and buckets of my tears. It doesn't have quirks so much as it has moods. It either works fine or destroys everything it touches. You can't even call it "temperamental," really, because that would require some consistencies. I've edited my previously positive "I just need to learn how to use it!" review to admit the truth: this is a TERRIBLE machine. I lied to myself because I needed to believe that I was getting better at moderating its bad behavior. I wasn't just inexperienced. It wasn't just the wrong lighting. I didn't need to just learn its quirks. It just sucks. The truth is, it's been terrible the whole time, and unfortunately I wasn't able to discern that within the return period, because it was my first die cutter and I didn't know whether the amount of trouble I was having was normal. It was terrible the day I took it out of the box and it will be terrible the day I mail it off to one of those youtube channels where they crush stuff with a hydraulic press. Also, Silhouette never actually manufactures enough new blades or cutting mats for it, so whenever one wears out on me I have trouble replacing it. I had to order a blade from a craft store in another country once and pay crazy shipping on it. I guess if you're still going to buy this (don't. for the love of god, RUN! run!! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!!) be aware you'll want to order your new mats and blades ahead of time.