Newbie Help between two diamonds!

[fordhamchris]

Hello everyone! I am currently looking for a great engagement ring from an online retailer. My budget for the loose diamond is about 5-7k. I want a round cut (to put in a tiffany style 6 prong setting). I am hoping to get something between a 1.3 and 1.5 carat weight.

Which of these two look better for you folks? Is the Hearts on Fire brand at white flash worth the premium?

Thanks for the advice!

Whiteflash diamond: http://www.whiteflash.com/hearts_arrows/Whiteflash-ACA-cut-diamond-2199903.htm

James Allen diamond: http://www.jamesallen.com/diamonds/I-SI1-Ideal-Cut-Round-Diamond-1223136.asp

Thanks!!!!

 

[swingirl]

I am partial to the ACA, "A Cut Above", from Whiteflash. It looks beautiful to me.

 

[yssie]

If H&A is important to you, the ACA is the way to go.


I prefer the JA myself, though - I

steeper crowns (with appropriately shallow pavilions and other numbers). You''d need to call in to get the IS and confirm performance, but it''ll be a beautiful rock if nothing''s wrong - leaning more toward fire than bright white return. The ACA is more balanced.

 

[Dreamer_D]

Date: 12/27/2009 8:13:42 PM
Author:fordhamchris
Hello everyone! I am currently looking for a great engagement ring from an online retailer. My budget for the loose diamond is about 5-7k. I want a round cut (to put in a tiffany style 6 prong setting). I am hoping to get something between a 1.3 and 1.5 carat weight.

Which of these two look better for you folks? Is the Hearts on Fire brand at white flash worth the premium?

Thanks for the advice!

Whiteflash diamond: http://www.whiteflash.com/hearts_arrows/Whiteflash-ACA-cut-diamond-2199903.htm

James Allen diamond: http://www.jamesallen.com/diamonds/I-SI1-Ideal-Cut-Round-Diamond-1223136.asp
Thanks!!!!

Made them clickable.

 

[Dreamer_D]

First, I think you are asking if a Hearts & Arrows diamond is worth the premium? Hearts on Fire is a brand name, but many other diamonds are H&A diamonds, including ACAs from WF. Are they worth it? Not necessarily. Do a search for H&A and you will see other threads with lots of opinions on the issue.

The WF diamond is a classic balanced cut that will show good white light return and also good amounts of fire. The JA diamond is what is called a Firey Ideal Cut (FIC, do a search to learn more). This type of cut will have tonnes of fire in the right lighting environments, but it will suffer a little in the white light return. So in lower lighting settings you will not have a little beacon of white light on your finger.

Me personally, I prefer white light return over fire if I have to choose because I think the majority of lighting environments I am in favour white light return, whereas I am rarely in lighting environments that favour fire, and so the latter is more important to me than the former. But it is a personaly preference thing. The only way you can know what you prefer is to see some stones like that in person I think.

 

[Stephan]

I don''t know which one I would choose.
If you pay the ACA premium, it should be perfect.
But this isn''t the best ACA I''ve seen: slight leakage in the table, pavilion angle up to 41.1 degrees...
The JA diamond could be nice, but the optical symmetry isn''t the best.

 

[Lorelei]

Both look great but an Idealscope image is needed for the JA stone in order to get a comparison. Also if you want a h&a diamond then the ACA is the one to go for.

 

[yssie]

I'm probably plastering 'newbie' to my forehead with this, but... does it matter what the sarin says variance is since the hearts image is impeccable? The stone must be tightly enough cut - I'd imagine even one bad facet or a bit of EW shift would throw things off enough to show in the pic. Right?


The pavilion range is bigger than we usually see for the ACA line, but I think I read somewhere that the sarin has a 0.1 or 0.2 degree error - esp. if they're the sort that spit out averages instead of all eight individual values...