Focus Stacking Comparison: NEO vs. Affinity Photo V2

Exciting comparison I just made with a stack of 63 frames Canon RAW CR2.
The object was my Bezzera coffee maker.
ISO 2500.
Exposure time 125 ms for each image.
Tripod was used.

Both programs hardly allow any adjustments for the stack.
In NEO you can select the primary image to be used as the basis for the stack. You can also click to remove chromatic aberrations.
In Affinity Photo you can't click on any settings.

Stacking time: NEO took about twice as long as Affinity Photo.

Both stacks are very clean overall. There are only a few small spots in both stacks that are not clean. But those are not noticeable at first glance.
But NEO has made the stack a little darker, see image 1. In some places of the chrome there is black discoloration that looks unsightly. Affinity Photo did a better job in these places, see image 2.

Image 1, NEO

Image 2, Affinity Photo V2

I also noticed that in Affinity Photo the chromatic aberrations were completely removed, but in NEO they are visible. So Affinity Photo did a better job here.

With NEO, the stack can be edited further, but the individual image layers can no longer be separated, because NEO immediately creates a TIFF after the stack. This is better solved in Affinity Photo. Here it is possible to use the layer function to go into each image layer and make corrections before manually saving the image. When saving you can also choose which format you want to have, e.g. TIFF, jpeg, PNG etc.

Another difference between the two programs is the RAM consumption. And as you would expect, NEO uses RAM like there's no tomorrow. In the end I ended up with almost 29 GB usage, my MacBook had to go into swap (32 GB RAM installed in total).
Affinity Photo behaves differently here. Just about 18 GB at the peak was consumed. That's something to be proud of. No swap.

Conclusion:
Both programs deliver a good stack with sufficient source material. However, Affinity Photo is somewhat better in terms of quality.
Affinity Photo also conserves resources, and renders somewhat twice as fast.
My favorite is clearly Affinity Photo (I would give it 90 out of 100 points), NEO comes in second in this comparison (I would give it 75 out of 100 points).