I print my own photographs and sell them. So I needed a cuter that was quick, easy and cut with smooth edges. I'm very pleased with this purchase.

this seems built very well, like the features they work well and it is heavy enough it don't slide around using it

This 18" cutter is beefy and accurate. It will make good accurate cuts in challenging materials. It cuts mat board cleanly. It will cut 15 sheets of copy paper. It will cut thin laminating film and thin dry mount film. The latter two are challenging because some cutters will cause these to fold over between the guillotine blade and anvil blade rather than cut. (this is the problem that drove me to buy this new cutter) A guillotine cutter should never be used on foam core. I tried foam core and it will work if you put it face down. The back edge of the foam core will be a bit rough but the (face down) top edge will be clean.

The design is interesting and different from other cutters. The guillotine blade is very thick (5/16") steel and bowed (see picture 2 showing the blade all the way down). The blade has a 1/4" lateral bow; at any point in the stroke the blade is only contacting the anvil at one point. This is an exaggerated version of the bow in a scissors. Other cutters have do not have boldly bowed blades. This bowed blade design really seems to work very well.

As I mentioned the blade itself is massive. Other cutters have heavy blade handles and thin steel blades. On this cutter the actual blade is 5/16" thick and the anvil is 1/4" thick steel. The blade is not actually all that sharp. If you grabbed the blade it would not cut your hand or finger, but it cuts paper, mat board, and films very cleanly. I suspect the bowed design is part of the ability to make a blade work extremely well without needing to be super sharp.

The blade and paper clamp will remain up in any position. This is very handy for paper positioning. You can slowly lower the handle to get the clamp to engage, remove your fingers with the blade staying up, and then complete the stroke to do the cutting. You will not need to use a shoulder to hold the handle up while positioning or clamping the paper.

I was able to trim very tiny slivers off of a photograph as one needs to do to correct slight boarder errors. A 1/32" sliver was easy and I could even manage almost down to almost 1/64".

The base is steel which is nice. It about the right balance of weight to keep the unit stable and light enough to carry. An added plus is the magnets stick if you are doing some fancy paper positioning or want to hold a drafting triangle to the board. (Want to try cutting Octagons perhaps?)

I am not excited about the scale or grid. The scale is 1/4" and the grid is 1/2". I prefer a much finer grid and ruler. Obviously you can use any ruler to supplement the scale on the cutter.. I found it easy to print off a grid and scale to my liking with a large format printer and double stick tape them to the base. If that is too much trouble for you, then you might just get a big sheet of graph paper that has a grid to your liking and stick that on the base.

Really nice cutter. I like the extra length of the 18 inches. I also like the extra of the paper holder. It's being used in a Middle School Teacher's Workroom. Hopefully, it is as sturdy as it looks. Only time will tell.

Good quality and accuracy in the cuts.