You should see a slab in person.

I loved the Torquay in pictures on the internet.

I loved the Torquay in 12" x 12" sample I purchased.

In person I thought the Torquay slab was way too busy and grey.

At the Cambria distribution center I saw the Dovedale and knew that was the one for me.

Expense will also factor into it. My Cambria fabricator is also the local distributor, so he is able to sell by only the square foot used in the kitchen, rather than having to have customer buy whole slabs, like my Hanstone fabricator has to do. (He keeps the scraps for other jobs.) It works out that Hanstone, although touted as a "less expensive" choice, is actually about 2K more than Cambria, because you have to buy at least 2 45 square foot slabs for your average kitchen instead of just the 60 square feet that the kitchen will need of the 90 square feet. (A 5K quote, vs a 7K quote, real world comparison) Now, if you're going to be doing your baths at the same time to use up more of the leftovers, you might get closer in pricing. But, with using more of the slabs, the labor price also increases, so just be sure you compare bottom line quotes with bottom line quotes.

I had the same experience as deeag. The Cambria Bellingham was in my top two choices based on the 1' square sample. When I saw it on a large island in a show home, I realized it wasn't the right one.

I am a fabricator.

Do some shopping. Around here Cambria is never less than HanStone even with the waste advantage a very large Cambria fabricator has. Here we can buy 1/2 slabs of Hanstone which pretty much negates the waste advantage of the large Cambria fabricator.

The advice to see the slabs was good advice. The consumer usually expects quartz surface to be as homogeneous as formica or solid surface and this is increasingly problematic as the quartz manufacturers introduce more and more variation into their products. A 12 X 12" (or smaller) sample simply does not adequately present the actual look of the slab with all its variation.

It has long been the practice by competent fabricators to have consumers view their slabs of natural stone when the stone has a lot of variation to avoid the possibility of a disappointed end user when the actual countertops include too much (or too little) of the features in a varied stone. The variation which is present in some of the newer quartz colors make this practice necessary for those newer quartz colors if missed expectation are to be avoided.