I tried these machines and i would say they were ok. Nothing special and although i know they are the cheaper end of the market-it feels like they are too. One of my colleagues swears by them and i got her to try the new version and she said apart from a bit of a size difference the machine is basically the same. She owns 3 Egos and she's had to send them all back for repair/replacement at some point. One of them even had smoke coming out of it during a tattoo?! A great way to reassure your customers! I feel the new version came out as a necessity as they realised the original's motor was just not good enough. They must've had sooooooooo many returns since it's release. I know a lot of great artists do some impressive work with these machines, i just think there are much better and more reliable machines out there. And they still sound pretty awful