Cricut Explore Air 2 - A DIY Cutting Machine for all Crafts, Create Customized Cards, Home Decor & More, Bluetooth Connectivity, Compatible with iOS, Android, Windows & Mac, Mint

Awesome I use it everyday

So far, I think this is an okay product, You have to use their software online. It also downloads something to your computer that runs on startup which connects to the online program. I dont like programs that run on startup or that connect to an outside company. Can you say potential for hacking? It also slows down my computer when I start it. So minus one star for this. My computer is running Windows 8 and did not automatically load the drivers for the cutter. The website does tell you how to do it, however, I can see this will be a problem for the technically challenged because it requires you to access the device manager and browse for the driver. The software is fairly easy to use. I just uploaded some images, printed and cut them. They were mostly clean images that I cleaned up in another program, but cleaning the image on Cricut seems easy as well. It lets you print on your printer then cut. I dont like that there is a lot of wasted space on my paper. I dont know if I can change the margins on this, but for a cutter that will cut on 12x12 paper, it should not only cut a 9x6 area on my 8.5x11 cardstock. It does need to print a black frame around the cut area to allow the cutter to find the right lines. My printer will print with .2 inch margins or less. The first thing I cut was on 110 lb cardstock from Neenah paper. It doesnt feel heavy as light chipboard. It cut great with the regular cutter. I bought the tool set and found the spatula is useless on the cardstock, it just rips it. My fingernails worked better. The standard sticky mat holds very well, at least when new. So anything lighter may be hard to remove. I would recommend the lighter grip mat for anything thinner than cardstock. I will update as I try other papers. I bought this and 4 days later they dropped the price by $13. This really annoys me and lowers the rating by a star. Amazon no longer matches the price for products it sells. This was not sold by a third party, which I could understand, since Amazon would not have control over the deal There should be a time limit on these things, since it wasnt a sale price, just a dropped price. I totally get not matching lightening deals.

I have done many projects in card-stock, vinyl and foil transfer. I have been very pleased with the results. It is especially awesome at cutting out vinyl, even very intricate designs. It does not cut intricate designs in card-stock as well. I have found that unless you use the premium fine point cutting blades the (non-premium) ones wear out really fast. I went through 1 a week, and I wasnt doing that much cutting. The machine is really nice, just stock up on blades.

Glad to have found this on a great Christmas time deal ! I do wish that the ease of use on initial set up was as easy as the 4 neatly-made guides in the box touted. I am an educated person and follow directions well; however, the easy 04 steps were not able to be completed. I had to find my way through - frustrating and waste of time . They need to guide their buyers as if they have NEVER seen a Cricut machine before. I think I would have much more created by now if I had clear direction. ALSO: I do wish that I didnt have to buy an Access subscription to be a valued customer. But I am still glad to have this generation machine. Hope to tackle learning it with youtube - without having to buy anything additional.

I have had this machine for almost a year now, and I confidently say, THIS MACHINE SUCKS IT REALLY IS TERRIBLE DO NOT BUY IT I dont understand how they have such a high rating. Since I mostly wanted it for sticker cutting purposes here are the reasons from that perspective why this is an awful machine. First off old problems: 1. The machine never calibrates well. Even if you calibrate it, everything cuts nicely for the first few (like 1) pages only. Progressively, it gets worse and worse and you have to recalibrate it AGAIN and AGAIN wasting paper. Also, if you are cutting stickers, as you go farther down the page, the Cricut cuts it more and more off. 2. The print and cut space is tiny, at only 6.75 inches x 9.25 inches. That means if you want to print stickers you can only fit it within that space, otherwise they wont cut. Thats a pretty big area of wasted real estate, especially since sticker paper can get extremely expensive. 3. In my time of owning this dreadful machine, Cricut has done a software update that completely DESTROYED its print and cut capabilities. The designs would be consistently cut off and you couldnt fix it with calibration. Online Ive seen lots of people who have small businesses depending on these machines get completely blindsided by this update and waste hours trying to get their Cricuts to work. When I emailed the company asking them how to fix this, their response was basically, We know this problem exists. We are trying our best to fix it quickly. NOT ONLY DID THEY NOT OFFER A SOLUTION (ex. downgrading to a previous version of the software) THEY ALSO DID NOT GIVE A TIMEFRAME OF WHEN THE ISSUE WOULD BE FIXED. At the price you are paying for these machines you would expect much more consistent performance capabilities. Even worse, they had zero transparency regarding this issue and basically only confirmed it existed if you contacted them about it. 3. The software - Cricut Design Space - you use to format images for cutting SUCKS. IT IS TERRIBLE. First off, theyll randomly update it and itll just stop working until you find that one stupid setting they changed and revert it back to the original. Furthermore the blade can only cut at one pressure. This means for stickers, if you want to have sticker sheets youd have leap through so many hoops. This is because sticker sheets need two blade pressures - a lighter one for cutting out the stickers that dont go all the way through the paper and a heavier one for cutting out the rectangle that the stickers sit on that goes all the way through the paper. ATROCIOUS. New problem - A BIG ONE: 1. Cricut has announced that they will be limiting the upload frequency to Cricut Design Space to 20 a MONTH in March of 2021. THIS IS APPALLING!! Basically in order to get your Cricut to cut the design you want, you have to upload that design to Cricut Design Space. Fine tuning designs and cutlines take A LOT OF TRIAL AND ERROR. ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE WORKING ON 3D PAPER MODELS. STICKERS TO A DEGREE AS WELL. 20 uploads is nothing. It will get used up instantly. Its funny as Cricut has said before Creative freedom should be free. :)))) Phew~ If youve made it this far, congrats. Honestly Cricut works fine when you get it to work, but when it only works 1% of the time and 99% of the time its mind numbingly, hair tearingly terrible, it’s NOT WORTH IT. This has been the worst purchase of my life. I did not research enough before getting this useless machine. Thanks to this awful experience, I have learned to research a lot more in depth whenever I have to make a bigger purchase. Anyways, I cant wait to sell this horrendous machine and invest in a better cutting machine. Its going to be rough doing that since I predict a lot of people will be looking forward to selling their vile Cricuts. Ive heard Silhouettes address basically every single problem Ive listed here. Before, I kind of shied away from the Silhouette Cameo as it was more expensive. But the frustrating experience Cricut provides proves its not worth it to save a couple bucks for your sanity. In terms of sticker cutting, Ive literally never seen any of the hundreds of artists I follow try to convince their followers to switch to Cricut, or that the Cricut is the superior cutting machine. Its always them trying to convince people that the Silhouette is better. And at this point, as a Cricut owner with firsthand experience of how terrible this machine is, Im inclined to believe.

I had tried a friends Cricut machine out before ordering my own, and I wasnt sure I wanted to buy one because it seemed awfully complicated. I had to be ready to sink some time into learning the machine and the software before I really enjoyed the things it can do. I am an elementary school teacher and Im finding all kinds of uses for the machine, including cutting materials for bulletin boards, labels, t-shirts, decals, cards, etc... if you sound like me, give this machine a try. My second major Cricut project was a serving try sort of thing - you can see it in my picture. It was a gift for a nacho-loving friend and she really liked it. It takes time to learn, and patience to do, but I think this machine is cool for things like that. Thanks.

Machine cuts well as advertised, no complaints with the cutting. My issues are with the design space software is terrible. First the design space is completely online so no client side software which is a terrible idea. If your stuck in a snowstorm and no internet and you wanna do some stuff to keep your mind busy forget about it no internet no cricut. Also if you like millions of other use Internet Explorer forget it is not supported??? Second the writers of the software have completely dropped the ball when it comes to sizing and placement, If you have taken the time to design something in illustrator or Photoshop to specific details or size constraints and you upload your image and expect it to retain your detailed sizes ....uh nope it just uploads to whatever size it wants and does not retain any size info so you have to manually re size everything, I mean why even bother designing it to any specifications. Third Even once you resize everything and you are working with say 8.5 by 11 inch sheets and you take the time to lay out everything just right so it fits and hit make it button do you think it retains any of the layout info you just did within their software??? NOPE. gotta relay the entire thing out again. Lastly the matt is to sticky if your working with paper and want to cut somewhat small designs and think your gonna peel off paper and keep it intact from that cutting matt think again if your cutting paper forget about it by the time you peel anything off that board it is curled up and rolling up on you. Overall summary cuts good but the software needs a client side App and some serious retooling, it is very limited if you wanna make some changes to your images you have to do outside then reload. I just think the software could be a lot better, they fix those items and Id be happy with it. I havent tried the print and cut yet, Ill update once I do

This review is not about the product. Its about Amazons delivery. Cricut is great for sure. I would like to give it a 5 stars but Amazon gave me a wrong color. I ordered MINT and they gave me White cricut. I reordered a new one and returned this one but Im afraid theyll do it again. If you can see the back box picture is really a white color but the picture in the front box is almost mint. My daughter even said its mint. Maybe thats why whoever packed this got confuse and theres not even a label in the box for the color. So maybe its cricuts fault too. Next time they should write what color it is. Not sure if Im the only one got a wrong color because of this confusing box and no label

I was told that this was easy to use, and that I didnt have to spend money on subscriptions, etc.. Ugh... thats the opposite of the truth. Its impossible to figure out, even after doing research, reading the manuals, searching for help online, etc.. Nothing should take this much effort. Plus, almost nothing is available without a paid subscription and the things I do download disappear. In addition, weeding and layering... forget about it. So disappointed.

The hardware is amazing, it feels premium and was able to cut extremely well. The company on the other hand is terrible. They purposely nerf the machine with software and the design space is completely useless for creation. You are required to use a mat because greed. The project size is capped at 12in by 24in because greed. There are adverts about their subscription every 2 seconds no exaggeration (Each time you click a button you get their ad). I ended up setting up every single project in adobe illustrator then exported in svg. I wanted to do a 24 in by 60 inch sticker, I properly split my design in illustrator into 12 by 12 cubes, uploaded it to design space and got told the project was incompatible with the machine. My workaround to this software roadblock was exporting each cube section into its own project. Projects have zero reasons to have size limits since when you do upload a 12 by 24 svg, the program does automatically split it for you. So why not let you go to infinite? well because they want you to upgrade to the next machine Again, the hardware is amazing, my first day with it, I made 8 shirts logos each being 12in by 16in and I made a giant 24in by 60in sticker. All thanks to Adobe illustrator.