I am cynical by nature, but not impressed by the link.
a. no mention of pump gpm, or if two stage pump. assume it is single stage
b. no mention of cylinder diameter bore
c. no info on the circuit at all. filtration, types of hoses, tank capacity, etc. No filter.
d. Viper engine is I think the china clone of honda. Leads me to think many china parts.
e. If the main attraction of it is the fact that the beam can be high or low, they are scratching the bottom of the barrel for marketing sales points. Beam height would be a nice feature, but not at the exclusion of the more important functional items.
Realistically, anything that is hard to lift onto the beam won't be split by 12 tons, so I am not sure of the advantage of the low beam position anyway.
f. appears pretty lightly built just from the pics. certain thing stand out to me.
This Brave EZ split is the one I thought you saw. It is tiny, the trunnion mounted cylinder collapses for storage, and it's advantage is size and space. Only 8 tons though.
http://www.braveproducts.com/itemde...tegory&categoryid=103&parentid;=&searchtext;=
To me, the Brave EZ split 'might' be a fit for certain niches.
However, IMO, the china one you saw seems to take up the space of larger machine, thus nullifying the advantage of storage and portability, yet is under powered for doing most larger tasks. It's cost approaches a stronger unit that woudl not be physically much larger. And I'd suspect resale value would be much less since it is a specialized niche customer that would want it.
I'd go the 20T, 4 inch bore cylinder, FOR SURE two stage pump, and 8 hp 16 gpm or so if possible. I do 90% horizontal, but a H/V model is pretty essential in smaller machines. (Larger wedge on beam units will be H only, but that is another topic.)
I'd pass on the one you saw.
.02 kcj
