I’m a total newb when it comes to rendering.
I see a lot of ohter solutions that in my newb opinion doesn’t differ a lot from what I see in Cycles. 
Could anyone with more experience please explain what makes all the others worthwhile?
Are they targeting different industries or something?
Hi Ivelin,
I think that the differences between the images produced by a slew of renderers are often subtle. And the ‘best’ image is often a matter of personal preference.
But I have a kind of Turing Test for renderers: if I can’t tell whether I am looking at a render or a photograph then that renderer passed the test. Some years back, when I was choosing a renderer, my choice was governed by the work on display in each company’s gallery. I bought the renderer with the gallery showing the most photorealistic images of things I might want to render.
Of course, other factors like plugin availability, price, support, workflow, ease of use, material libraries etc matter too, so my choice has not been without angst.
Would I have bought a renderer if Rhino had cycles back then? Probably not. I’d not have got quite such nice images, but the difference would have been so slight it would have been comfortably offset by the extra beer money in my pocket.
But do look at the images in the galleries (at full size) and see what floats your boat (pun intended).
Jeremy
I have a strong feeling that this depends on the skills of the modeler rather than the renderer itself.
Also another topic that you mention, the price:
It seems all these commercial renderes base their tools’ price on the image (as in popularity) rather than the technology used. I also see impressive animations done with Blender.
What renderer you want is kind of a religious thing, just try them out and see what you like best. Relevant factors to consider are if you want GPU or CPU rendering, how good the Rhino integration is, and if you think they’re still going to be around in a year or two. V-Ray is the 800-lb gorilla, everything else is a niche plucky underdog. I use iRay, which was developed by Nvidia and is used in a number of products as their internal raytracer. The nice thing about the smaller names is that you may better response from support, I had an issue recently where it was slow to initialize on scenes with tens of thousands of curves–which are technically possibly renderable, so they can’t be ignored–and they got me a fix in days.
I use V-Ray since a very long time and for me it’s the ultimative allrounder, good for anything. I provide a visualization service for designers and architects. Without V-Ray I couldn’t deliver so fast and at high quality level. Very important for me are fast rendered complex interiors.
From my view:
Thank you @Micha,
Where do you think Raytraced stands among these?
Or Cycles as perhaps there are still things not included in the Rhino import.
Raytracing is the basic of accurate simulation, most engine use it more or less. For example Enscape is using a lot of fake effects and render images in seconds instead minutes or hours. But also Enscape is using additional raytracing. But for example not hundred percent for reflections.
All other engines are strong using raytracing, it’s the basic. So, I’m not sure what you ask for.
I meant the built-in implementation of Cycles. Called for confusion “Raytraced” 
. @nathanletwory why you do that?
To distinguish it from the older Rhino Render which isn’t.
Because what lies below is not what matters. The point is that the viewport is raytraced, hence it is called… Raytraced. In v7 Rhino Render is powered by Cycles, but still called Rhino Render.
A user just changes to Raytraced, not having to know it is Cycles. A user just uses _Render, not having to know it is Cycles.
That you know may help you, but not knowing doesn’t make changing to Raytraced or using _Render any easier or harder (:
Render engine is your choice like painting tools.
You try and continue with the one you like and feel it can give you what you want without spending months to learn it.
I like maxwell even it is slow, vray have a good quality but need time to learn it.
Cycles i use the one for blender it is also a good choice with powerful material editor.
Simply try and choose what you prefer
and also have Thea render, twinmotion,
Thea render – the best render engine for rhino
Twinmotion – real time engine and syn for rhino
Maverick render – high quality render engine, but no distribution render
As architect I use flamingo. I checked rendering same project flamingo and Blender 2.8. And still like flamingo, because a lot of tools are simple and understandable. When In nearly future Blender will use more simple tools, then time for considerations will come.
You are aware that Cycles from Blender is in Rhino 6 as the Raytraced mode? And as Rhino Render in Rhino WIP?
Looks as similar engin.
Not “similar engine”. The SAME engine, with minor modifications to adapt to Rhino. I believe Nathan is one of the major contributors to the development of the Blender version also.
Thanks letting me know:)
Actually, for Rhino WIP I’m making quite big changes. Not to the rendering core really, but to how we get the data out from Cycles into Rhino as fast as we can.
I stand corrected. Does this mean that Cycles development for Rhino will flow back in the other direction to Blender?
For the parts that make sense sure, we can submit patches. But most of the patches are very Rhino-specific currently. We haven’t had the need to do custom patches in the way of features just yet.