Cycles has long been accused of being slow and therefore 'unfit for production'. But actually, Blender Cycles today has never been faster.

In fact, it's almost twice as fast as it was two years ago. I tested 3 different scenes on the same computer, using both CPU and GPU - and compared the results with the last 8 versions of Blender.

BMW Test

This is the standard benchmark file used on BA for years. No textures, pure geometry and reflections.