D800E NX2 vs ACR for RAW processing?

Too much of a personal thing here. As I've said before, discussing raw conversion and which one is best is almost like arguing which (if any) religion is best. Probably not a single answer there.

It almost sounds like you've already made up your mind on ACR, so that's the way you should go. Better to spend time to master that one; later on you can go explore the others in more detail if you want.

Personally, I like to keep a few converters in house since there are times one might do a better job than the others. Nikons Capture NX2 is my primary converter of my D800E files, mostly because I shoot studio and in my tests I prefer the skin tone rendition over ACR, particularly in the shadows to lower midtones.  However, the process 2012 version of ACR/Lightroom is much improved over older versions, and my preliminary testing of photoninja is looking good as well. I haven't used the latest version of Capture One and need to get on it so I'm current with it, but I've been busy. Haven't liked DXO in the past and it's a bit pricey for me to consider it again given how well the others are working for me right now.

-m