By Andrew Liszewski
If you’re a crafty type with a penchant for gadgets you’re probably already familiar with the Cricut. It’s kind of like a printer, but instead of printing your design on paper or other materials, it cuts them out. However, it can be a pain to use since it requires everything you want to cut be attached to a stiff matte before passing through the machine, and designs are limited to what’s already available on expensive cartridges you have to buy in addition to the cutter. (Should you choose not to use an unapproved SVG-friendly third-party program.)
But the eCraft Cutter does everything the Cricut does better, and even a little more. It can cut on any thin material up to 12-inches wide in a continuous roll without the need for a matte underneath it, and the included eCraftshop software allows you to either design your own patterns and graphics, or import an SVG file exported from your favorite ‘illustrating’ application. It’s also able to draw thanks to a marker tip integrated into the cutting head, and from what we saw the cut results were as crisp and smooth as if someone had used a fresh hobby knife. Available some time in the next couple of months for ~$300.
