Received my Spear on Monday and got to log a few hours on it. In a direct comparison to the Xion I've noticed a few things. The Xion is a noticeably smoother running machine which leads me to believe their drive system is way more efficient. If you take the grip off of the Spear the drive is visible and is the same system as the Hawk pen and all the other knock off pens. The Spear is significantly larger than the Xion but feels lighter. The adjustability of the Spear is really cool. With the machine all bagged up it is easy to adjust stroke and give by a few twists. In my opinion though, the Spear is a bit overpriced. $600 would be a fair price in my opinion. If you could merge the Xion drive system with the adjustability of the Stigma then it would be worth every bit of $700, but as mentioned it does not run carts no where near as quite and efficiently as the Xion does. You run a cart in the Stigma and it's noisy and chattery, pop that same cart out and run it in the Xion and it's dead quite and that smoothness 100% translates to skin. I would also like to note that I tattoo at very low voltages so if you're a guy or gal that tattoos at higher voltages you may hate the Xion and love the Spear. I'm going to log some more hours on it, but my initial reaction was a little bit of buyers remorse vs. the first time I used my Xion. Below is a piece I did yesterday using the Spear.
28277327_1545968048772838_3900392147787441258_n.jpg