Triple Thumbs up on APS hand tool from me.
For the life of me, I can't understand the last post.
Perhaps Standing Wolf hasn't loaded primer tubes, or fiddled with flip trays, or inserted primers one by one into a fitting on a "benchrest hand primer". If he had, he'd understand how much better the RCBS APS hand primer is...
"It's slow"
What hand tool is faster? I can load a twenty-five primer strip into the tool in 4 seconds. Then I can snap in ANY case that I reload (from .380acp to 45/70) in another couple of seconds (no fiddling around looking for shell-holders).
I squeeze, primer seats. I release, primer strip advances. It will load as fast as you can slip a new case in and out. And if you decide to load less than 25 cases, just pull the strip out and put it in a box. Try that with one of the little flip tray units...
The APS bench unit is probably the only thing, shy of a full progressive press, that will prime cases faster. And if you're loading precision rifle ammo, that will not be done on a Progressive anyway.
"It's unreliable. It's finicky"
I suggest you send your tool back to RCBS and ask for a replacement. Mine has been like a hammer in terms of simplicity and reliability. Perhaps you were trying to load large primer cases with the small primer pusher shaft?
Maybe you tried to load hundreds of rounds with the tool in one session. That will be tedious. But that's not its purpose. There is a dedicated bench tool for that. I started loading on a single stage. I used a Lee auto-prime. Hated the round flip trays. It didn't balance well in the hand. It was flimsy, sometimes primers got sideways in the feed unit. So I switched to an RCBS bench unit (Pre-APS). It worked quite well, if you maintained a rhythm, but sometimes one of two primers would get lodged in the thing, or catch on the detent on the bottom. I also though the process of picking up primers one by one with the tube was just primitive and time-consuming. Also much too easy to grab an upside down primer if you aren't paying attention.
Then I got the APS hand tool as a complement to my RCBS 2000. Now I prime all my pistol stuff with the progressive while match rifle rounds are done with the hand tool. I also have a unit that screws into a Rockchucker if I ever need to prime a few hundred rifle cases at once.
Of all the tools on my reloading bench the three I can recommend unequivocally are the APS hand tool, my Midway set of case gauges, and my calipers. I suspect Standing Wolf's unit was flawed in some way. The thing is just so intelligently engineered and user-friendly, I just don't understand how he came to the conclusions he did. Using mine I've never had an inverted primer, never a sideways primer, never a bent or crushed primer, never a high primer. The "feel" when seating is excellent and nothing has ever broken.