Oh this thing is awesome and I don't regret getting the little LU2-2 head for it. Compared to my 5.5W the engraving is insanely good and it cuts quite well at 3mm, even cleaner with extra air. I swap my heads a bunch. With 5W I'm cutting 5mm electrical panel plywood cleanly without burning using air assist. Without it, the plywood is too toasty. Consider that when building, but in my tests a beefy fish tank pump or a DC motor airbrush compressor work great. You *will* need smoke evacuation and an enclosure at some point and short of big industrial filtration systems there simply is no way to filter such particles - without it you won't be able to safely or comfortably cut or engrave much of anything, it's not really optional. I installed a window vent system and ran duct to a blower on an enclosure I used the laser to cut. Consider fire suppression, like a simple kitchen flare up it's an easy thing to manage if you are ready for it. Don't do dumb things and do have something nearby for emergencies. I've got a fire blanket, retardant, extinguishers, and simple covers in arms reach so when I light something up the worst thing that might happen is damage to the laser. Air assist also helps mitigate that.

　　What you get is a great laser head, adequate safety glasses for indirect glare, a well designed frame, and a stable ESP32 based controller with good stepper control and a frame that doesn't need a bunch of fiddling to get it set up. I think I could have done this in my sleep, FAR easier than a 3d printer is to set up and using GRBL is so much nicer than trying to emulate support in Marlin and hack your printer to do this, they just aren't appropriate.

　　Lightburn is great software and offers trials, but LaserGRBL has come a long way too and you can get started using that, don't sweat the expense until you get the hang of using it a little. The cable management is handled by a split ring conduit that does act a bit like a reticulated chain but a proper axially constrained drag chain would be best in most cases. The cables are protected and managed and mostly won't drag on the work though.

　　The accuracy is astounding for just being microswitch homed, synchro driven, and I did nothing special to tram it. I can repeatably hit the exact same spot with the laser every time. Protection features for leaving it on without movement and such worked great out of the box, I haven't modified the firmware or settings at all on the machine since I haven't needed to. The price of this machine was a little lower than the parts individually even, I was building my own but when I saw this deal I grabbed it and I totally don't regret it.

　　You're gonna see people running these with no shield on, no enclosure, going all John Wayne with it. Please don't do that without taking the necessary precautions. If you have no pets, bystanders, ignitable material in proximity, and are 100% wearing safety equipment at all times then you're probably good but that's not simple and what if your glasses slip or? I've already had one accident, thankfully not serious, now it's in an enclosure with shielding and I mounted 2 cameras for remote monitoring of the bed and the head, they're cheap USB cameras nothing special but you can manually track them at the workstation or configure Lightburn to do the distortion correction for your lens and stuff and map the coordinates to the bed area like xTool does. If done right, it's very accurate for setting up jobs without moving the work piece or even getting up from the chair. It's a basic machine, but it's got a work area bigger than almost any small-medium sized laser and a ton of versatility thanks to being an open frame system. In some ways you can do a lot more with this than the fancier systems without wasting all that money on hype. My DC compressor runs circles around the $200 pumps and it cost $20 lol, it was just louder until I stuck it in a box with urethane foam baffles. It's all up to you as the machine operator and builder how far you want to take your upgrades based on your unique workflow. If you enjoy hacking on your machines or want to learn how to, you might be glad you didn't buy something more "easy" and less flexible. If you're new, read read read read read and consume every tutorial, the quality of the work you produce with any tool is directly proportional to your own mastery of the tools and techniques. Good luck.