A RED, in and of itself, means very little. They have quality control issues, software issues, customer service issues and that's with 50K+ cameras – I doubt they will do better with their budget option. The image is generally good, but for the last 3-4 years, not noticeably better than any other big manufacturer, and looking at the Komodo footage out there, it just looks, well, fine. Their biggest strength is the R3D RAW codec. What many internet DP's believe to be the biggest strength – prestigious brand recognition – is just not there when you arrive on a real film set. RED evokes mixed feelings in people who've worked with them, no better than Sony, Canon C-series or Varicam, and certainly not ARRI level of reverence.

I'm so surprised by this list that I'm suspicious of the underlying methodology and data...

"D stands for daylight, meaning it'll roughly match 6500° K

6500°!? Is that the kelvin they're going with? Glad I pre-ordered the X version then...

Had to be! It did seem suspicious, as a lot of the bolded films are canonical classics a man of his cinematic appetite would have seen ages ago.

First off, it does not cost more – 259$ for a perpetual licence is cheaper than Resolve and FCP (300$ each) and quickly cheaper than an Adobe subscription.

Secondly, a lot of professional (meaning reliable and accurate, nothing more) plug-ins cost the same or more than the NLE's in which you use them – that is simply a result of the economics of scale: Bespoke, niche plug-ins which only a fraction of editors will use will still require teams of programmers to work for years, while an NLE has millions of users. If iPhones were made for a small professional user base, they would cost tens of thousands of dollars – not because of unfair mark-up, but because would be the only way to recoup the development cost.

For instance:

Izotope RX8 Suite: 1199$
Sync-N-Link: 495$
Neat Video OFX: 249$ (cheaper than it used to be)
etc.

Tarkovsky is not a Scandinavian filmmaker...