The "cheap" cutter that ended up outperforming my $300 one

I've been editing for about 4 years now, mostly short-form stuff for clients. Last month I picked up a $60 rotary cutter from a local shop in Portland just to test it out, figured it'd be a backup at best. My main unit was a $300 model I'd used daily for 2 years. I ran a side-by-side test on a 2-minute clip, same timeline, same export settings. The cheap one cut the footage in 40 seconds flat, the expensive one took 2 minutes and 15 seconds. I re-ran it three times to make sure I wasn't imagining things. The only difference I could spot was the cheaper unit has a simpler interface, but that doesn't matter when it just works. Has anyone else found that mid-range or budget tools blow past their high-end gear once you actually stress them?

1 comments

1 Comment

taylorshah28d agoTop Commenter

You ever had a tool just straight up embarrass the fancy one? I had a similar thing with a cheap audio interface, the budget one was cleaner and had zero latency while my expensive one kept dropping out. Sometimes the simple stuff just gets out of the way and does the job.