I've had the Nugsmasher nearly a month now, I thought I'd leave some thoughts as not a lot of people have done so.
Service: This was devastating man. When you're in the sales process, they'll answer your questions day and night. LIterally, at 7am in the morning, at 11pm at night you'll get an answer through the sites online chat. And as part of their sales process they'll tell you that this same level of support exists post-sale. It's a total lie. Don't believe them. Your 5 minute wait for a response turns into a week + on their online support ticket, and they'll tell you that's normal. Then you'll wait 2 weeks for a subsequent reply, and it's just normal that tickets get lost. What's the ticket system for then if you can't see all your open tickets at a glance? It feels like the whole courting period is a lie, and it makes you feel like a fool later on for giving them your money when you can't get the help you need.
Instructions: The instructions are rubbish, bordering on non-existent. On the Nugsmasher Mini, it just says start at 205 degrees and go down. Which is rubbish advice that will result in a lot of wastage, and a lot of sappy boof. They should be telling you to start low. Your yields will be lower, but you'll get usable rosin. And you can always turn the temperature up after starting low; you can't put the genie back in the bottle if you start at 205.
They'll also point you to their youtube channel, which is frankly bizarre to me - their youtube channel doesn't even pretend to be instructional for the most part, it is 90% flex videos. Which is fine, you should absolutely show your product in its best light - but don't point me to your flex videos as though they're instructional, cos all they're going to do is make me feel worse about what I'm producing.
Hardware: This potentially goes under "service" too, but I don't think mine works exactly as it's supposed to. The instructions tell you to store it with the plates closed. Except my plates don't stay closed - over a few hours of non use the bottom plate falls away, suggesting an issue with the hydraulics. They've told me this is normal, which I don't really believe, I just think it's a convenient line when I'm half way around the world, and when it's too hard to fix a problem that, in the short term at least, doesn't materially impact the functioning of the device.
Product: I guess the juxtaposition to all of this... the reason I don't automatically say "this company is carny bullshit, stay away"... is that after some trial and error, and after getting advice from another owner/legend on a discord group who gave me a shit ton more help than Nugsmasher gave me - I'm pretty happy with the product I'm getting out. "Fire in, fire out" is unfortunately true - it's not a way to try and get something out of shitty weed, nor is it a way to mute flavours on something you don't like the taste of. On the contrary, it just super concentrated the taste, and gave me this enormously overwhelming citrusy taste on my most recent press.
The impacts are outstanding though. 1 decent sized Glob Van Dam does me most nights, and 2 of them leaves me stoned like a school boy, often doing a random beavis and butthead chuckle at nothing.
So I guess take all that for what it is. I think knowing what I know now, I would've watched the local sales a bit longer - I could've gotten it locally in Australia for a similar price to what it cost from the US after shipping, and I would've felt better about having local support and the potential to return it if it wasn't going well. I guess it hasn't mattered - I'm not going to return it, as I say I'm quite happy with what I'm now producing. (I just wish I still had the ability to grow, I never really made best use of the opportunity in my previous place when I could've gotten away with it.)
It's no thanks to the company though - it's thanks to a random legend online who walked me through his process, showed me his results, shared his yields etc that I was able to sort it out.