Please note that the previous post is purely unsubstantiated opinion. Unless someone is referencing actual tests with comparable products, they are offering nothing more than personal anecdotes.

Here's my opinion. I bought several version and gave them an honest try. I love supporting the underdog, and with the programmer's long involvement in the Poserverse and Dazville, I felt that he was someone to trust and support.

Stuff to like....

-being able to change lighting while it rendered was absolutely brilliant. This saved soooo much time since I didn't have to wait for a render to finish to fiddle with the lights.

-documentation was pretty good.

-being able to continue playing while it rendered was nice but I rarely took advantage of this. I normally set a scene to render when I leave work and let the renderer use everything.

Stuff that sucked.....

-Pret-a-3D is just one guy. Bless his heart, he gives it a hero's try...but he's just one guy. Support ranged from spotty to non-existent. I was having a problem with the program either ignoring my camera or creating it's own to use. After many requests for help, another user piped up that this had been a known problem for some time. Huh?! If it was known, why wasn't it mentioned in the documentation? When I tried to uninstall it to install a newer version I ran into all manner of problems. The author was adamant that one only had to delete the installed directory. Several users again piped up (many with screenshots) mentioning that the installer threw files all over the place that required deletion for a clean install. The author never answered these. If you look at the Reality forum you'll see a few questions that haven't been answered despite being months old.

-I loved the idea that one didn't have to buy pricey (and increasingly redundant) shader packs but I found that all materials looked the same, mostly glossy. Making one's own materials for every scene become burdensome and prone to error.

In the end I asked for a refund. In Blender or Poser I now use Cycles. The few times I use Studio I just suck it up and use Iray. There's enough free shaders available that I don't have to feed Daz3D's cash cow.

Of course, this is just my personal opinion based on my own experience. Your kilometerage may vary.