OK, I've got a little over a year of experience handloading. I intially stayed away from power trimmers because of the price, but now they seem like one hell of a deal. I'm looking at the RCBS, the Giraud, and the new Hornady trimmer coming out. I like the Hornady because of the added case prep center in one unit, but wish it had a three way cutter like the RCBS. The Giraud looks outstanding, but pricey, and I can't imagine that it's as accurate indexing on the shoulder. I'm kind of leaning towards the RCBS, looking to trim 223, 308, and 375hh, although 375 is not as big of a deal, I shoot about 1% as much out of that as I do 308.

I use the RCBS power trimmer, mainly for 223 cases. I find changing case lengths somewhat trying, so I avoid it as much as possible. Do your 308s stretch much? I trim my 223s once just to get them all the same length. Then that batch is not trimed again.
Peter.

The Giraud is excellent for LARGE batches of brass.

I have the RCBS with 3-way cutters. Together they make life easier. The 3-way cutter is a pain to setup in the small calibers (20 and 17) and you’ll burn up at least one case neck getting it perfect.

When I bought my first 3-way I thought I would buy the cutter and pilots for the different calibers I load for, then just change out the pilots when I needed to trim a different caliber cartridge. Because they do take time and ruin brass to setup, I said screw that and I own a 3-way for each caliber I load for now (that they make a 3-way for anyway).

It doesn’t sound like money is a problem as far as the RCBS unit goes, but if it is, you can buy the hand crank RCBS trimmer and buy the power head and frame later. You can still use the 3-way with the hand crank model. You can get a power drill adopter for it too, I used one many moons ago. The drill adapter was clumsy (that’s the kindest thing I can say about it).

If you go ahead and buy the power trimmer, you’ll be happy. That doesn’t mean that you may not be just as happy with a different brand trimmer, it just means the RCBS power trimmer is a very good tool and beats the hell out of turning a crank.

Thanks for the input. I'm thinking the RCBS is probably the way to go for me. I never do more than 100 cases at a time, so the difference in speed between the Giraud and RCBS isn't that big of a deal. I do like that the mess is contained on the Giraud, but not worth the cost difference to me.

I've use the RCBS for tens of thousands of cases. It's not the fastest but it's easy to use and you can do other operations while it cutting, like clean the primer pocket on one while the trimmer is running on another.
There is a pretty quick way to set it up and change it between calibers, just unlock both set screws and push the stop forwards. Put in a case needing trimming and let the cutter make 1 or 2 turns and then stop it. Measure the partially trimmed case, lock the back screw and turn the front of the stop in 1 mark for each thousandth the case was long. It took longer to type this than it usually takes to set up the length.

I didn't like the Giraud because my hands became fatigued holding the small cases like 223 into the cutter.

If you have a Dillon press thier trimmer is really nice also, especially with a case feeder. It's expensive to set up since you have to have a die for each caliber but it's much the fastest, just dump in cases and crank the handle...................................DJ

I'd buy the Hornady in a heart beat.

The case prep system will handle the ID-OD chamfer easily.

Have you seen this Sinclair?

Upscale for sure.