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

So far I love it! There are some pluses and downsides. On the plus side, because Im prime member it came rather quickly and free shipping! Ive been cutting away since I got it last week. The downside is the limitation on free access to Cricut Access for the Design Space. I got the machine on 3/30 and have Access until 4/17. The feature of one year subscription apparently doesnt apply across the board. It depends on which item you select on Amazon that day. So read carefully. If its not mentioned in exactly what you purchase, it will be brief, if at all. And it looks like it is very limited in the free images and fonts. That being said, I love the tutorials you can find all over the internet. I watch them over and over. If you are afraid of icons, (and there are plenty), the tutorials will be a great saver of frustration. I had an Expressions Cricut before. To me there is no comparison; the Explore Air 2 beats the Expression hands down! It is easier to use, there are more sources for help, although there are many icons, they are very organized in what each does. So, the learning curve isnt that bad. Im back to scrap-booking and there isnt a page I made that hasnt come from my Cricut Explore Air 2. In four days Ive made 4 pages and 2 cards. It is so much easier and fun with the Design Space and the images from Access. I was anxious to get this and got a really good deal. Be patient, the $ changes every day! I spent my savings on supplies Ive been using with my Cricut Explore Air 2 since I got it. I have more coming in. I agree with others, the extra money isnt worth what you get in a packet. If you price it out, and are patient, you can get some really good buys of supplies you intend to use or try out, instead of what you may or may not use in a packet. Im so excited, even still, as ideas keep coming to me on what I can try to do next!

Es una maquina muy buena, para aquellos que les guste las manualidades, es muy versátil y practica

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 doesnt seem to come with a compromise to the quality of the cut. The machines biggest flaw Ive 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 youve gotten very skilled with using the machine the software is a hurdle. Design Space is a joke. Because they didnt 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 browsers 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 dont 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 youve gotten past the upload issues, youre 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 dont happen, great. Lucky you. -Depending on the browser youre using the software will scale images differently on the output getting cut on the mat. So even though youve 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 isnt 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 everyones shirts yourself, but found that it would be too large a job or inefficient on costs...too bad. Youre going to do it on the Cricut, or youre 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 whats 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 lets you drag a shape out in ways that wont 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 dont 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 youre using these mats, youd 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. Ive watched videos on how to restore the tackiness of the surface of the mat but it hasnt returned to its original tack, causing anything with a curl to peel up constantly. (like vynil from a roll..a staple of this machines worth). Youre 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 dont 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 youll actually like and use...and the rest, like an album CD from a singles artist, is junk youll likely not ever use. Everything thats 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 youre not a designer, if youre not THAT serious about crafting and eating from Cricuts 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 its luster. Ive spent hours and hours daily on this device with the Design Space software. Ive gone through learning from dozens of hours worth of online tutorials and youtube how-tos.. Ive bought hundreds in materials and have dozens of active projects, I am an avid user. Take that for what its worth, Ive beat this thing up and heres what I have found. Hopefully this helps someone else before they buy.

UPDATE: Following up on the below-mentioned, I will continue to give this item a substandard rating. After school, I went to Walmart and bought the exact same item. As soon as I made it home, I opened the box and started to pull the pieces out. The first thing that I noticed was that there were more items in the box (unlike the first package). Secondly, the Cricut was actually wrapped in packaging and safety material. This instantly made me think that the previous owner returned the item (even after they registered it) and didnt even have the decency to return all of the original materials. Additionally, Amazon sold me a product that was marked as New but was definitely not. I will be more thorough about my new purchase from Amazon. Now, as for the machine, once I pulled it out of the packaging and fired it up, it instantly worked the way it was supposed to. It paired to my iPad instantly (where I couldnt even get to that step with the first one). My iPad even made the necessary updates. Overall, Ill give the new machine a 4-star rating, but I will give Amazon a Zero. You fooled me once. ORIGINAL: I purchased this item in September 2022 for a future school project. Today, the 10th of March 2023, I opened the package to use for my project. Upon setup, I noticed that the power button had a continuous red light. The white light, by the cutter blade, was also on. After much research and using online troubleshooting, I called tech support for Circut. I walked through the process of troubleshooting with the technician. He also inquired about what my email address was that I used to register this item. I informed him that I did not register the item (because I just opened it up today). However, I provided him with numerous email addresses that I use for private and work-related business. He then inquired when I purchased the item. After finding the exact order information on my Amazon account, he informed me that the item was registered WAY before I purchased the item. Now, since the item is not registered to me, and my 30-day return policy has passed, I am stuck with a large paperweight. I am sure the product works great. However, at this time I will warn any future buyers to register it immediately or to try another item.

The machine works fine. But I order the buy new. But I think I got an use one instead. The box that it came with had some vinyl letters cut out. The machine was dirty. Missing accessories like the cutting mat but the all the cables that you needed were there. But overall I tested it and it works great.

Cricut used to be the creme de la creme for makers, artists, and crafters, but theyve seriously lost their way. This is a great device overall, but the software that comes with it is absolute garbage in every possible way, and in a few weeks Cricut will be demanding you pay $10 a month for Access which is their paid subscription product in order to continue to use your own designs or be capped at 20 total uploads per month. This is unacceptable, and while the hardware is fantastic, the software, which has been hot garbage for years, is now a paid subscription that all but the lightest of occasional users will have to buy into to keep using their device. There is no local option; everything goes through their servers and now youre going to be charged to use them. I cant complain about the hardware, but considering how often I have to upload, then re-upload, then re-upload just to get something right with this clod of an app, its disheartening to know Ill have to pay $10 a month to keep going. The only thing they have going for them is that the competition is terrible (Sorry Silhouette, your app is garbage and your hardware is pathetic) but I am not a happy camper. If they go back on this subscription service, or give me a local storage option, Ill happily up my rating because I am, overall, very happy with my purchase, but as of today? It was hard to not go down to 1 star. Cricut needs to fix this because great hardware hobbled by terrible software is not great hardware.

Having a blast using ours. We made graduation card for my niece, tee-shirt for a company bbq and decals for the cars. Having fun.

So far so good! Ive had this a few days and the directions to get it up and running are very easy. So far, Ive just cut a bunch of images with cardstock and some vinyl to get used to it, but it seems to be working very well. For the reviews that say that you have to pay a monthly fee to use it, thats simply not true. The software is free and you can use it on a computer, tablet, or phone. The subscription is only if you want unlimited access to Cricuts images. But they have plenty of images that are free to use, plus the Internet is full of free images. You can also make your own easily, just watch some YouTube videos to see how. But if Cricut has an image that you really want to use that isnt free, you dont need to subscribe, you can buy an image individually. There is a free two week trial of their subscription, but Im not going to use that until I really feel like I could take advantage of it.

I have always wanted a cricuit and finally bought myself one for my birthday. I was nervous that it would be hard to learn, but it was not, and I have been having so much fun making decals. I am looking forward to learning to make more things. It really has limitless possibilities.

Loved everything about it while I had it, used it for only 3 weeks and it died (red power button). Thank goodness it was still within return period. Ended up getting the Explore 3 instead (along with Amazon protection plan since Cricut doesnt seem to have great support for their machines). If you are using as a business its a great crafting tool. But for occasional crafters might get expensive as you have to pay for almost all the graphics and fonts in the Cricut design space unless you have a subscription.