Hiarcs chess explorer vs. Chessbase 12

I've just purchased the Hiarcs chess explorer and although I have fritz 13 I have been impressed. I've always wanted chessbase 12 but didn't want to put that much money into it. Hiarcs is half the price.

Seeing I don't have chessbase 12 are there pros and con's to the two? Thx.

I have Hiarcs and think it's a great program as well.  The limitations of it are that you have to keep shuffling databases in and out of the program because it only handles pgn files (if I remember correctly).  Your max database size is only around a million games (again if I remember correctly) whereas a program like Chessbase 12 can handle a variety of file formats and much larger databases.  Bang for the buck though it's hard to beat and the engine plays a very "human" game.  I especially like being able to easily practice against the computer in any of about 100 popular openings as an aid to learning them.  You can also do quick searches of databases with ECO codes and play through the games at your leisure or super fast.  One of my better software purchases...

chessbase 11 or 12

Does the explorer have an analysis tree similar to chessbasr12 i havent been able to find it. A nice feature that ive seen in chessbase12.

Hiarcs chess explorer has a tree for any database or search result as well as the book tree, as far as I know even Chessbase 12 does not have a database tree. I guess its confusing cos they dont use the word tree in Hiarcs instead they call it the opening explorer. Thats the feature I love most, its great for analysis and prep and with the player explorer makes the app unbeatable imho

I have both chess explorer and chessbase 12 and I tend to use chess explorer a lot more because it is easier to use and faster while just as powerful and works on my Mac. I guess I wasted my money on CB12. I have transfered my databases now from CB to Explorer, I have not found any limit so far, I have a DB of all strong games and it is less than 500K games anyway, got rid of the rest it was noise anyway.

I also like being able to load more than one DB at once, that was a big issue with Fritz where I used have to jump through hoops to do thing that just take a coiuple of click with Hiarcs.

I upgraded to the new HIARCS Chess Explorer Premium version. It now has a new proprietary database format (.hce) that is very fast (up to 30 million games).  It adds reference tree functions, can open .cbv database and .ctg tree formats to name a few.