I have very little operational experience with these units other than watching them. I worked for a distributor many years ago that sold Roland and what I will say is that they are indeed MUCH quieter than the cheap Chinese units...I know because I am exporting some of them for a client and was at the factory making an evaluation, and while they cheap in price the noise might get you if your using it a lot or its in an office space where it will be heard by others. On the upside parts are dirt cheap unlike some companies that make a mint off a replacement cutter strip.
That said, the machines I have exported seem to perform just as good as many smaller units from Roland or Graphtec, unless your doing some seriously complex designs...not gonna happen for newbies and the only real limitations that have been made aware to me are the drivers. Some require you to manually install the drivers using Windows device manager and may not work with a Mac system. The other limit may be getting replacement cutting blades.
