Brother Scan and Cut vs. Cricut Maker – Which One Takes the Crown

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Brother Scan and Cut vs. Cricut Maker - Which One Takes the Crown

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When it comes to crafting and cutting machines, there’s no easy answer, considering that there’s always going to be at least one alternative to the machine that you’re eyeing that seems to have just a couple of extra features.

Since you’re not going to buy them all and then decide which one’s best for you, we’ve decided to simplify the process for you by comparing various cutting machines to some of their counterparts. By the end of it, you’ll hopefully be able to make an educated choice that will reflect both your needs and your budget.

Without further ado, in this guide, we’ll discuss a bit about the capabilities of the Brother Scan and Cut compared to Cricut Maker’s, given that they’re both pretty popular choices when it comes to competent cutting machines.

If you don’t feel like skimming through the whole review, we’ll just go ahead and give you the name of the winner, although it’s not as educational for you to skip discovering the features that tell those two competitors apart. Spoiler alert: it’s Cricut Maker, and we’ll briefly let you know why.

Cricut Maker – Why Is It Better?

• Intuitive

The Cricut Maker is easy to use and has a smooth learning curve thanks to its streamlined software solution

• Fit for many needs

Whether you’re an advanced crafter or a beginner, you’ll find that Cricut Maker can fit your needs just as well

• Supports multiple materials

Cricut Maker features support for over 100 materials such as leather, vinyl, fabric, and paper, and can cut even tiny shapes with amazing precision

• Versatile

You can use Cricut Maker for various projects, such as creating greeting cards, cutting T-shirt designs, or making stencils

• Twice as fast

Comes with a 2x speed upgrade that can help you finish your projects in a timely manner

• Affordable

Not only is the machine affordable on its own, but it also has a low ownership cost (affordable accessories)

• Premade designs

Cricut Maker features a generous collection of premade designs and fonts you can use in your projects

Brother Scan and Cut vs. Cricut

Brother vs. Cricut

Before we start, you must understand that both machines have their strong points, but they also have a bunch of drawbacks. In the end, it’s all about what features you are willing to compromise for and what drawbacks are dealbreakers for you.

Therefore, even if we suggest that you stick with a machine, ultimately, you’ll have to make your own choice based on our observations, but you’ll also have to take your needs from your soon-to-be cutting machine, as well as your budget, into consideration.

Are you ready? Let’s ring the bell for the Cricut vs. Brother cage match.

Cricut and Brother Applications

If you’re new to the world of crafting, you may need a quick crash course on what cutting machines can help you achieve. Whether you go with the Cricut or Brother cutting machine, they could both help you create designs and cut them from various materials.

While most people use them for vinyl (they’re both excellent choices for cutting vinyl) and paper, you can also use them for other materials. Brother Scan and Cut 2 not so much, but Cricut Maker 3 can handle more than 300 materials, including more stubborn ones, such as leather, fabric, and even mat board.

The Cricut Maker also has a large collection of accessories, which will let you expand your business (or hobby, for that matter) and conquer new territories in terms of craftworks.

That’s not to say that the Brother Scan and Cut 2 isn’t great at what it does, though. With its built-in 300 DPI scanner and generous LCD screen, you can get started working on your projects in no time and without pairing the machine up with a secondary device.

The presentation above is merely meant to show you a comparison between the two cutting machines. As you may have noticed, we only focused on the strong points of each contender, as we’ll soon pop the hood right up and take a closer look at what these two machines can or can’t do.

It’s worth mentioning that the machines we’ve used for our comparison guide are the Cricut Maker 3, which we believe is the absolute best choice when it comes to Cricut cutting machines, and the Brother Scan and Cut 2, seeing as it’s gone a long way to surpass its predecessor.

Brother Scan and Cut 2 vs. Cricut Maker 3 (Detailed)

Size and Weight Comparison

Despite the fact that many crafters don’t see size as being a definite dealbreaker when it comes to choosing the perfect cutting machine, there are a lot of crafters who are also educators or who need to take their projects on the road for various conventions or fairs. For them, size and weight are crucial.

While the Cricut Maker 3 and the Brother Scan and Cut 2 are about the same in size, the former weighs about twice as much as the latter, which could be a bit of a problem. As far as finding space on your busy desk, both machines will probably fit just fine.

However, if you need to move your cutting machine frequently from one place to another and you can’t exactly use a convenient means of transportation every time (such as a car), you may want to tip the scales in Brother’s favor. It will save you from a lot of back pain in the long run.

Strength

Here’s something that has to do more with the machines’ actual capabilities and not with their designs: their strength or cutting power. Now, this may not look like a fair fight, considering that there’s a huge difference in cutting power between the two.

Cricut Maker 3 delivers a whopping 4000g of cutting power, while the Brother Scan and Cut 2 only hits the 350g mark on the strength scale, which is almost 11 times weaker than its counterpart.

Cutting force is paramount, especially if you’re planning to use your cutting machine with more than just some basic materials (such as paper, vinyl, or cardboard). Cricut can handle more than 300 materials, including more resilient ones such as mat board, craft foam, fabric, and leather.

Thus, we’ve concluded that from a cutting force standpoint, there’s absolutely no doubt: Cricut Maker 3 is definitely the winner.

Material Clearance

Now here’s another important aspect of your cutting machine: the material clearance. This parameter is actually your machine’s capability to work with materials of a certain thickness, so the larger its supported material clearance is, the thicker the supported material could be.

Cricut Maker 3 comes with a clearance of 2.4 mm, which should be more than enough even if you’re using it for a small business. At the opposite corner stands the Brother Scan and Cut 2, which can handle only 2 mm, which could feel enough for a hobbyist, but not if you’re serious about working with thicker materials.

However, if your only plans with the cutting machine that you’re going to choose after reading our guide are cutting paper and vinyl, you’ll breathe out in relief considering that even2 mm are enough to process these materials. Furthermore, you won’t even need a cutting force that’s higher than 100g for those two materials, so you can also scratch the part about cutting power.

Cutting Speed

We all know that speed plays a huge factor in our daily lives, and this also applies to crafting aficionados. If you can finish a project early, after all, why shouldn’t you? As long as the end result won’t look completely awful because you rushed through it, that is.

We learned that Cricut Maker 3 has a cutting speed of 8 inches per second, which is really impressive. It also comes with a 2x speed upgrade that you can toggle on or off, depending on how fast you want to go through the material with the blades or pens.

However, note that going full throttle on any cutting machine, let alone the Cricut Maker 3, will also tremendously increase the noise it generates, so maybe refrain from doing that if you’re in a busy household or there’s someone trying to focus or sleep nearby.

The Brother CM350 ScanNCut2 has a decent cutting speed, but it’s no match for the Cricut Maker 3. On the plus side, it can scan a mat in just about 20 seconds, so it takes a bunch of extra points thanks to this nifty little feature.

Auto Blade

The Auto Blade is a feature that crafters never knew needed until its implementation on various cutting machines. The brilliance behind this feature is that it lets you eliminate all the guesswork from your projects and ensure that their quality will always be the best.

Brother Scan and Cut 2 features an Auto Blade, which means that the projects you’ll be going to create with its help will always turn out fine as long as you can specify the type of material you’re using.

Cricut Maker 3 lacks this feature, which means that you need to configure most of the parameters of the cut manually by using Cricut’s software solution, the Cricut Design Space. The bottom line is that Brother gets the point for implementing a crucial feature in its flagship cutting machine.

Dual Carriage

The Dual Carriage feature is a bit self-explanatory; instead of boasting just one holster, the cutting machine has a dual carriage which means that you can configure and run two separate steps with the same machine, such as drawing and cutting.

Cricut Maker 3 showcases a dual carriage, which means that you have two holsters where you can place the tools that you need. Mind you that the two holsters can accommodate any tool you want, just as long as it’s supported by the machine.

For instance, you can put two pens if you want to run two drawing steps, two blades if you want to cut and then cut some more, but you can also mix and match by placing a pen and a blade to streamline an entire drawing and cutting process.

It’s worth mentioning that the operations won’t run side-by-side but sequentially, so you’ll have to figure out a way to manage your projects using the Dual Carriage feature.

Unfortunately, Brother Scan and Cut 2 lacks this feature entirely, which means that you’ll have to wait for it to complete the first step, perform a bunch of configurations on its software, swap the tool you need for the second step, and let the machine carry on. Although it may not sound like such a big deal, it actually costs you some precious time doing all that.

Obviously, the point goes to Cricut Maker 3, seeing as the Dual Carriage feature can save you a lot of time performing configurations and swapping tools.

Custom Designs

Both the Cricut Maker 3 and the Brother Scan and Cut 2 come with a selection of premade designs so that you can jump right into crafting moments after successfully setting up the machine. However, this doesn’t mean that you should stick only to those designs.

In fact, that’s the whole point of getting a cutting machine so that you can unleash your creativity and generate new designs that the machine will cut, thus saving you a lot of precious time. Look at it this way: built-in designs are nice to have so you can grow accustomed to the machine, but custom designs are where the real fun is really at.

Obviously, both machines support custom designs, but the way they work is somewhat different. For starters, the Cricut Maker relies on an external software utility that you have to install on your PC so that you can feed your custom designs to the machine through it.

While this is somewhat standard for cutting machines, here’s where the true genius behind the Brother Scan and Cut 2 truly shines. Although the Brother Scan and Cut 2 has a software tool you can use to load your custom designs, the machine also benefits from a built-in scanner.

This means that you can simply scan an image of your design by feeding it through Brother Scan and Cut 2’s built-in scanner and let the machine do the rest. The scanner has a resolution of 300 DPI, which means that it will be able to detect even the finer details of your design.

Since you can operate the Brother Scan and Cut 2 with or without an external device, it goes without saying that as far as custom design support goes, Brother Scan and Cut 2 is definitely the winner.

Software Integration

As we’re sure you’re aware, software integration is definitely a crucial component of cutting machines, so it should make perfect sense that we’re using this feature in our cutting machine comparison between the Cricut Maker and the Brother Scan and Cut 2.

The Cricut Maker comes with an intuitive software solution that can help you create your designs, customize them, and process them through the machine in no time. A while back, Cricut Maker’s software was actually a web application, which meant that you could only access it from web browsers.

That’s not the case anymore, which is equally good and bad news. The bad news is that you can’t just access Cricut Design Space from any Internet-enabled device, as you’ll actually need to download an app for a supported device, install it, and then run it.

The good news is that, as opposed to the previous situation (when the utility was actually a web app), you don’t necessarily have to be connected to the Internet in order to use the app. You can also make it run in its offline mode, if necessary.

Sure, you may need to move some stuff around, and yes, you will need to be connected to the Internet if you want to access Cricut’s generous database of designs and fonts, but you can also prepare ahead by downloading everything you want and use them in the offline mode.

Brother Scan and Cut 2, on the other hand, is on a whole different level, given that you don’t even need to have a secondary device in order to use your cutting machine. By using the built-in 300 DPI scanner and generous LCD screen, you can get started with your projects in virtually no time.

On the downside, working on an LCD screen and not a monitor can feel somewhat limiting, so you may find out that although the Brother Scan and Cut 2 provides you with a lot of freedom and flexibility regarding not being tied to a secondary device, it also restricts you and the types of operations you can perform on it.

The bottom line is that if you’re constantly on the move and participate in a lot of fairs or expositions, you’ll definitely find that Brother Scan and Cut 2 is a better choice since you don’t need any secondary device to operate it.

However, if you don’t mind pairing up your cutting machine with a laptop every time and know for a fact that you have everything you need with you, or at least you have a sturdy Internet connection at the destination, you may consider going with Cricut Maker, seeing as it gives you more freedom.

Supported Materials

Cutting power is definitely a turning point when it comes to cutting machines. I mean, would you still purchase a machine if you found out that it can’t cut the material you’re planning to work the most with? Didn’t think so.

Thus, it’s safe to assume that this parameter is indeed an important one, and in turn, we’ll use it to compare the capabilities of the two cutting machines that we’re comparing today in our guide, the Cricut Maker and the Brother Scan and Cut 2.

The Cricut Maker has an impressive force of 4000g, which is one of the highest cutting forces that a machine of its caliber has. The fact that it can apply 4000 grams of cutting force to whatever you feed it makes it possible to work with a broad range of materials.

More so, it also allows you to feed materials that are strongerand more resilient to the machine, and it will handle them just as easily. However, you must definitely pay attention that whatever it is that you feed to the Cricut Maker isn’t thicker than 2.4 mm, since that’s the clearance of this machine.

On the opposite corner stands Brother Scan and Cut 2 with a cutting force of merely 350g, which is less than 11x of the cutting force that its counterpart provides you with. So it’s not exactly a competition at all here, considering the huge difference in cutting power levels.

Reportedly, Cricut Maker can cut more than 300 materials, which makes absolute sense, judging by its cutting power. It’s also advertised as being capable of cutting tougher materials too, such as leather and mat board. It goes without saying that as far as cutting power goes, Cricut Maker gets the point.

Cutting Size

If you don’t want to settle on just finding the machine with the highest cutting power on the market, you’ll want to press on and look for more parameters that could help you decide on which machine is best for your needs and another equally important feature is the cutting size.

While Cricut Maker boasts an industry-standard cutting size of 12 x 24 inches, Brother Scan and Cut 2 only provides you with a 12 x 12 inches maximum cutting size.

If you’re interested in Brother Scan and Cut 2 so far, but you’re a bit disappointed about the limited cutting size, you’ll probably be glad to learn that you can purchase an additional add-on mat that would expand the cutting size of this machine to a full 12 x 24 inches.

We weren’t glad to learn that, but if that’s the only thing that’s stopping you from making the leap and purchasing a Brother Scan and Cut 2, you should just go for it at this point.

If you find the practice of almost halving the industry-standard cutting size and then asking for money to make it ‘normal’ a bit unsavory (like we do), you could just pick Cricut Maker and stick with it.

Note that you can also extend the Cricut Maker 3’s cutting size, but the good news is that you’ll still have the standard 12 x 24 inches cutting size available to you. For once, you can use Smart Materials in your crafts, which will allow you to perform cuts up to 12 feet in one go (yes, 12 feet).

If that’s not enough, you can also consider getting an upgrade by purchasing the Cricut Roll Holder, which can load up to 75 feet of material.

Noise Levels

Alright, now you may believe that we’re just nitpicking now since noise levels should be absolutely the latest thing you should worry about when picking a cutting machine, but trust us, if you’re planning on using the cutting machine often, the noise will start to be a nuisance in no time.

Cutting machines are generally loud, there’s no way around it. I guess you could give it a try and find a model that can cut your designs flawlessly and still let you hear a pin drop, but you won’t be able to, and let me tell you why.

For starters, these cutting machines have a lot of moving parts, and these moving parts, believe it or not, are set into motion by motors. Some machines use servo motors, while other use stepper motors, and the latter are usually much noisier than the former, but that’s not the point we’re trying to make.

As long as you have a machine with multiple motors whirring around in your house, you won’t be able to achieve that level of complete silence. However, there are still notable differences between cutting machines since each of them has a different build than the other.

We’ve mentioned in one of our other comparison guides that the Silhouette Cameo 4 is (in)famous for the noise it can generate. Scratch that, all the cutting machines in the Cameo family are notoriously loud. However, we’re here to talk about the Brother Scan and Cut 2 and Cricut Maker, so let’s see which one’s better from a noise standpoint.

The Brother Scan and Cut 2 is a bit noisy, as you’d expect from a cutting machine, but it’s nothing out of this world. The word we’d use to best describe it is acceptable since it is, after all, a cutting machine we’re talking about.

On the other hand, the Cricut Maker 3 seems to score another point in this department as well. This cutting machine is not 100% silent, but it generates way less noise than any of its counterparts (in this case, the Brother Scan and Cut 2).

One quick tip, though: if you want to keep the noise down, even with the Cricut Maker, we suggest you refrain from using the 2x speed feature. You’ll get the job done slower, but at least you’ll have a quieter machine. On the other hand, if you can afford a bit of noise, you can fire up the 2x speed and get the job done twice as fast, but with a lot more noise.

Ownership Costs

It’s one thing to buy a cutting machine that can set you back a few hundred dollars, but accessories are a whole nother story, since you have to keep buying them, and the frequency of this purchase strictly depends both on how often you use the machine and the way you use it.

A hard lesson you learn as a cutting machine owner is that accessories are not made to last, and it’s easy to understand considering that the accessories are actually knives and blades, which get dull in time. Although it doesn’t seem that way, paper is one of the biggest enemies of blade sharpness.

Now back to our sheep; you should always take into consideration the costs of owning a cutting machine, and not only its price. The price of the unit doesn’t matter as long as you’ll end up paying a fortune for maintenance, supplies, and accessories while you own it.

With that being said, you should know that while Brother Scan and Cut 2 is a bit more affordable than its counterpart (the Cricut Maker), it has one of the most expensive sets of accessories on the market. In addition, some customers have even complained that Brother’s mats lose their stickiness way faster than products from different brands.

Thus, you shouldn’t be thrilled that you can save a couple of bucks if you go with the Brother Scan and Cut 2, seeing as purchasing accessories every now and then will definitely set you back a whole lot more than if you went with the Cricut.

It’s worth mentioning that, at the time being, the Cricut Maker offers some of the most affordable accessories on the market, whether it’s fabric pens, scoring wheels, replacement blades, or mats.

Screen / Docking

We’re going to go ahead and announce that this is a tie way before we start going into more detail. As we’re sure you know by now, the Brother Scan and Cut 2 features not only a built-in 300 DPI scannerbut also a generous LCD screen that lets you perform various operations without relying on a secondary device.

On the other hand, the Cricut Maker 3 includes a docking station and a USB charging port for your phone or tablet so that you can run Cricut Design Space straight from your Android or iOS device without worrying that you’ll soon run out of battery.

At this point, it’s more of a personal choice whether you need a machine that eliminates the need for a secondary device (i.e, the Brother Scan and Cut 2), or you prefer having a docking station where you can add a separate device to access the design software of the machine.

It goes without saying that the screen & scanner combo is more impressive than the docking station, which is why from our standpoint, the Brother Scan and Cut 2 gets the win in this department, but we’ll let you be the judge of that, based on what you need more.

Cricut vs. Brother Side-by-Side Comparison

As we’re sure we already made you aware, there’s no such thing as a perfect cutting machine. In fact, all of them have flaws, and it’s only a matter of preferences and what features you can compromise on that decides which cutting machine can meet your requirements best.

We’ve already talked about what these machines are capable of, and it seems like we’re looking at them through rose-colored glasses, but the reality is that these machines have flaws of their own, even if they seem to be able to handle a huge variety of tasks.

For the sake of our guide, in the next couple of sections, we’re only going to focus on the drawbacks of each machine and won’t compare it to the other. This decision was made mainly because these machines are built differently, and comparing their drawbacks may sound a bit like an apple-oranges situation.

Drawbacks of the Cricut Maker 3

First of all, we should discuss about the Cricut Maker 3’s most obvious limitation, which is the fact that it lacks an auto blade. Seriously now, complaining about the lack of the auto blade may sound like nitpicking, but it’s really not.

If you’re the type of crafter who just toils away in its workshop manually configuring everything and setting each parameter to an exact value every time you’re working on a project, then by all means, the auto blade is not for you.

But if you’ve had enough of constantly being inches away from perfection and want to eliminate all the guesswork from your projects, then you should know that the auto blade can take care of everything and pull you out of this annoying situation.

A while ago, the Cricut Maker had a software utility that was specifically designed to be used online. Not only that, but it actually was a web application, which means that you could only access it from a supported web browser.

That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore since Cricut Design Space now needs to be downloaded and installed on a supported device. While, in our opinion, this is not necessarily a bad thing, there are a few customers who preferred the web app version, so we’ll put this half-heartedly as a drawback.

There’s one last thing that you might find a bit disconcerting about Cricut, and that’s the fact that you’ll need to buy a subscription plan if you want to access its complete database of designs and fonts. While this isn’t a limitation of the machine, it comes with owning one, so it still counts.

It’s worth mentioning that the subscription plan is not mandatory, but it can definitely make things easier for you by providing you with an impressive collection of designs and fonts you can work with.

Brother CM350 ScanNCut2 Shortcomings

Brother Scan and Cut 2 is an overall reliable machine, but it lacks a bunch of features that would make it even better. For instance, it doesn’t have a dual carriage mode, so that you can’t run multiple steps on the machine without stopping and configuring parameters for each operation.

Second of all, the cost of the machine may be comparable to that of other desktop cutting machines, but the cost of its accessories is a bit much, if not even exaggerated. Although you could save a bunch of dollars during the machine purchase phase, the accessories will burn a hole in your wallet.

Now let’s discuss the scanner for a bit. The scanner is what tells Brother Scan and Cut 2 apart from other similar products in the market since almost none of them have a built-in scanner and an LCD screen you could use to control the machine without a secondary device.

While the scanner is most definitely a sought-after feature, it could definitely do better. If you have a monochrome or high contrast design, you need to process, Brother Scan and Cut 2’s built-in scanner will do great, but if you’re using a colored design with not so much contrast, you may have a hard time.

The sad part is that there’s no way of knowing that until the scan comes out, and all of this trial-and-error back-and-forth will definitely set you back some bucks, you’ll have to spend on wasted materials and supplies.

Here’s a hot tip: if you notice that your scan isn’t completely accurate, you may want to increase the number of colors in your design, increase the contrast, or re-adjust the scanned object’s position.

Last, but not least, the LCD screen, which many consider a real lifesaver (considering it eliminates the need for a secondary device), is a bit sluggish, whether you decide to operate it with your bare fingers or the design pen this machine comes with.

Brother Scan and Cut vs. Cricut Maker – CONCLUSION

To wrap it up, this guide is here to help you make an educated choice when it comes to picking up your new cutting machine that will assist you with your crafting, as long as you’re on the fence between the Brother Scan and Cut 2 and the Cricut Maker 3.

We’ve discussed the good, we’ve talked about the bad, and now you should understand a lot more about these machines, the way they work, and which departments they lack in.

It goes without saying that neither one of the machines is perfect, as they both have some quite annoying limitations. Now regardless of what we said in our guide, the final choice between the two cutting machines will be a matter of your own preferences and what features you’re willing to compromise for.

The bottom line is that both machines are excellent and what they do, but the Cricut Maker 3 seems to dominate Brother Scan and Cut 2, at least regarding features that both of them share (e.g., cutting force, cutting size, cutting speed, noise).

FAQ

What’s better than Cricut Maker?

At the time being, the Silhouette Cameo 4 is not only a fair match for the Cricut Maker, but it’s also more powerful in some aspects, such as cutting force, cutting size, and material clearance.

Can I use custom images with Cricut Maker?

Yes, it’s possible that you can use custom images with any cutting machine from the Cricut family, as long as you’re using the proprietary software solution called Cricut Design Space. The utility features support for SVG files, as well, and the best part is that it’s 100% free.

Is Brother Scan and Cut 2 better than Cricut Explore Air 2?

Although the general consensus seems to point in the direction of the two machines being highly comparable or even alike, we believe that the Cricut Explore Air 2 is simply better. Not only is it less expensive (both the machine and its accessories), but it also has a smoother learning curve.

Can I create my own designs with Cricut?

Yes, you can use Cricut Design Space (proprietary Cricut software for its cutting machines) to create your own designs and use them with Cricut machines, whether it’s the Maker or Explore Air you’re sticking with.

What’s the best Cricut machine to buy?

Obviously, the best Cricut machine you can buy at the time being is the flagship model, Cricut Maker 3. It has everything you need to get started, features a huge cutting force of 4000g, has a 2x speed boost, is silent, and its accessories are among the cheapest ones on the market.

Which machine is best to cut vinyl?

If you want to cut simple materials that are not very strong such as vinyl or paper, then really, either one of the Cricut Maker 3 or Brother Scan and Cut 2 is a valid choice. However, note that the Brother Scan and Cut 2 is more expensive, both the machine and the accessories and supplies it comes with.

What’s best between the Silhouette Cameo, Cricut Maker, and Brother Scan and Cut?

Although the machines may seem similar at first sight, the Silhouette Cameo and the Cricut Maker are in a league of their own from many aspects (cutting force, cutting speed, cutting size). The only thing that the Brother Scan and Cut brings to this 3-way match is a built-in scanner and an LCD screen, which eliminates the need for a secondary device to interface with the machine, so if you’re into that, you should stick with Brother.

Do I need an activation card for my Cricut machine?

As far as we’re concerned, you can activate your Cricut machines without an activation card. On the other hand, Brother sells ScanNCut online activation cards that will let you connect your Brother Scan and Cut 2 machine to a wireless network.

Is the Brother Scan and Cut 2 better than Cricut Maker 3 or Silhouette Cameo 4?

No, it’s not better, the Brother Scan and Cut 2 has a 300 DPI scanner and an LCD screen that many customers find attractive or convenient, but as far as cutting power, cutting size, speed, or accessories cost go, the other two cutting machines are far superior.