I gave it a 3 star because after a ton of research an finally making the purchase, I found that I still have to buy a bunch more stuff to be able to actually make anything! I knew about some of it beforehand. I didn’t buy a bundle pkg because I couldn’t afford that, an I’ve got tons of other craft supplies here. Besides how do you know what you’re going to need or use if you are a beginner?? So anyway, I did the cricut tutorial with the included materials, three pcs of card stock an a black cricut pen, an it worked out beautifully! But when I went to make a different simple card for another personal occasion, I had none of the items an cricut accessories needed to make any of them. So for example, I didn’t have the cricut multi colored pens or multiple colored card stock to make some of the seemingly simple cards I was looking at. And for you some projects you still needed a printer too, it seems. Another thing to be aware of...one of the selling points is this huge library of images an crafts. Well, you have to purchase access to those after a 2 wk trial access an still may need to buy some exclusive images even with that...just be aware that you need various supplies to go along with this machine in order to let your creativity soar, and ongoing charges for the access to library, that’s all. The machine itself is amazing but much more of an investment than I realized!

The Cricut Explorer Air 2 is an excellent piece of hardware for the money. The extra speed of the Air 2 vs the original Explorer doesn't seem to come with a compromise to the quality of the cut. The machine's biggest flaw I've run into is the software. When you are still new to the Cricut or new to crafting in general the Cricut seems like a dream come true. Once you've gotten very skilled with using the machine the software is a hurdle. Design Space is a joke. Because they didn't want to invest in software instead of the web control site they built instead, even with 16GB of DDR4 memory the design space software hits the browser's RAM limit and crashes all the time, losing all your work. It does not have an auto-save feature to help with this either. Uploading: Design space makes importing images a chore, being over simplified there are not enough tools and options to completely process a single image into different pieces for layers. Also if you don't do it all during upload, getting it done within design space will add on 3x the effort to just get a clean image you can work with. If you have a graphic that will need to be disassembled into pieces for assembly in design space, you have to upload the image multiple times and manually pull out all the details from each piece, saving them as separate uploads and then inserting them into a single project. Design Space: -Once you've gotten past the upload issues, you're in a design space window ready to create. Design space loves to eat RAM. So much so that if your design is complex, the browser will crash or lock up. If these two things don't happen, great. Lucky you. -Depending on the browser you're using the software will scale images differently on the output getting cut on the mat. So even though you've made super precise designs that all have to fit together just so...your cut is going to be in a different place on the mat that you chose, or the design is not to scale making it useless. Since there is no compensation for this in Design Space, you end up doing a lot of costly trial and error to adjust for the difference in scale. Chrome works best, IE is the worst, Safari isn't much better. -YOU CANNOT EXPORT ANYTHING. NOTHING. Everything you design belongs to Cricut and is locked into Design Space. If you want to design something in Design Space, then export that for sending to say, a t-shirt shop because you initially were going to make everyone's shirts yourself, but found that it would be too large a job or inefficient on costs...too bad. You're going to do it on the Cricut, or you're not going to do it with Cricut at all. -There are too few tools for creating free form shapes. I have been trying and trying to use what's there to make a simple shape for a vinyl side stripe for my car.. forget it. The shapes are too generic, and unlocking the L and W dimensions only let's you drag a shape out in ways that won't allow you to change an angle of a curve to make a custom shape..you can work around it with a lot, a LOT of patience and time but will have to settle for simple shapes if you don't have a pre-made vector graphic to upload. Cutting Mats: The cutting mats are really cool the way the grid more or less matches with the grid on the screen in Design Space. That said, they lose their sticky very fast for the price tag. If you're using these mats, you'd better keep that clear plastic shipping cover they all come with and stick it back on after every use. I have one mat that I kept the clear sheet on it and one that I did not...the difference is night and day. I've watched videos on how to restore the tackiness of the surface of the mat but it hasn't returned to its original tack, causing anything with a curl to peel up constantly. (like vynil from a roll..a staple of this machine's worth). You're going to need two mats minimum, one standard stick, and one light stick. (Green mat, and light blue mat). Card stock will come apart trying to use a standard stick mat, but peels off excellent on the light stick mat. Vynil on the other hand usually has a curl and needs the standard stick. Overall: This machine is still great, but the longer I use it the more I wish I had bought something that allows you to create things that don't have a Cricut logo on them. This machine is entirely focused on getting you into the Cricut ecosystem, having you subscribe to "Cricut Access", and pushing you into buying Cricut accessories. I have not bought any cartridges, they seem like a throwback to the older machines, pre-Explorer. The cartridges seem like a waste of money, you get some of what you'll actually like and use...and the rest, like an album CD from a singles artist, is junk you'll likely not ever use. Everything that's in the cartridges are available al-la-carte in Design Space allowing you to buy them based on your project need individually..although the prices are stupid expensive for what they are generally. $5.00 for a single font choice. $10 for a project component. If you're not a designer, if you're not THAT serious about crafting and eating from Cricut's hand for content is fine for you, the Cricut is going to be amazing. If you are more skilled than beginner or have become skilled while using the Cricut and are getting more and more advanced, the Cricut begins to lose it's luster. I've spent hours and hours daily on this device with the Design Space software. I've gone through learning from dozens of hours worth of online tutorials and youtube how-to's.. I've bought hundreds in materials and have dozens of active projects, I am an avid user. Take that for what it's worth, I've beat this thing up and here's what I have found. Hopefully this helps someone else before they buy.