Silhouette Cutting Machines

[Needanewadventure2021]

Hi can anyone help me please?

I've been looking in to cutting machines and ended up making the purchase of the Portrait 3. I cant see I will ever be a massive user nor will it be for business use, just personalising gifts at the most, plus space is limited to set it up, BUT on the day it arrived I was made aware there is a Portrait 4 coming out!

Hoping some silhouette users will come along and let me know if it's worth returning and waiting for the 4 to be available in the UK. when is it being released?

T.i.a x

The 4 will potentially be more expensive and for what? Have a look what the features are of it over and above what you will have on the 3 and see whether those additional features are important to you. And I guess if that extra cost is worth the extra features! And how long till release ;)

This tends to happen quite a lot with these things, you buy one and then you have a new release. But they aren't quite like phones in that they go completely out of date!

For example, I have an extremely old Silhouette Portrait (original and knocking on for 15 years old!) and still use it now and again for my smaller business stuff. I have large industrial plotter/cutters etc that I use for my day to day work but when I do a fair/event, the trusty little old portrait comes with me as obviously it is the most portable. It runs happily from the studio software which even at the latest release still supports the legacy machines like mine :-)

Careful - I bought that little old portrait because I fancied just doing a few personalised gifts things for my family and so on and it became addictive and turned into a business!! ;-)

Good Luck! xx

Thanks @MollyMini a few people have told me this. I'm just hoping to find something I love enough to keep it going. I love what I've done so far but feel I will get far more satisfaction doing it myself.

Also thank you for giving me perspective. It certainly seems the Portrait 3 will have some longevity then. I had decided to keep it the other day following similar comments from other users when i posted in a forum, but your post just confirms I am happy to keep my 3.

I got the original Cameo and then didn’t upgrade again until the Cameo 4. I’m not sure what differences there are between the portrait 3 and 4, but typically one gen to the next isn’t huge.

the thing I would consider splurging on is upgrading your software up one level. Start with the basic one, but the features one level up are really nice and at least when I did it was just a one time lifetime fee. It’s really worthwhile even as just a hobbyist.

@Ponderingwindow thank you for this advice. Is the software purchased in the website?

You download the software from the website. It’s free and you can do it even before you have a machine.

highly recommend anyone considering buying one do that because they offer free designs every week. You can create an account and start downloading the free designs once a week even if you don’t have a machine yet. Sometimes around holidays they do a new free design every day. I got this tip from someone else while I was thinking about my first machine. I had a nice library by the time I finally bought one.