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I considered buying one when I had a job haha. I played around with one for about 20 minutes at the music shop...
If you need a control surface for mixing only, with touch sensitive, motorised faders etc. then really there is no comparison... literally!
I ended up buying a BCF-2000 ($300AUD) just to see how I went with the Mackie protocol. The problem with the BCF-2000 is that it has no LCD display on the unit showing paramters. Instead, it shows them on your computer screen. I found that to be annoying and basically never used the BCF (it's going on Ebay this week). If you can handle looking at your screen rather than where your hands hare to view the parameters, and don't need touch sensitive controls, then get a BCF. It covers all the critical functionality of Mackie controls (levels, EQ, sends, etc.) basically identically (except for $1,500 less). With that in mind, $1,500AUD is a lot to pay for touch sensitive faders and a small LCD screen. I don't see Mackie Controls as offering very good value at all.
Personally, I get the feeling I would have never used it even if it did have LCD readouts. It might just be me, but by the time I had reached for the fader I could have done 5 things by mouse.
I'm probably going to buy a Novation Remote SL Zero in the near future. They have support for the Mackie protocol too, but don't have motorised faders. They do, however, have a full LCD parameter display. The benefit of the Novation stuff is that you get automapping and can use it to control everything, not just your mixer.
If I were you, I would definately try and spend a day or two with each of those three options before you buy one. It's really difficult to tell if any of it will fit in with your workflow!

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