I find it hard to do a head to head comparison of L-N v's Clifton, not only through not owning any Cliftons but in the differences in the plane styles the two companies market. The differences in build quality only broadens the difficulty.
I've mentioned some of my L-N's in other posts here; I won't repeat what I've said earlier. However, if memory serves, I don't think I've covered why I chose L-N to replace and expand on the few Stanleys I started with.
Discovering that even when well tuned, my Stanleys just couldn't achieve the quality of prep / finish I'm looking for really angered me. Trying to build a decent range of tools is difficult at the best of times, more so at this time of year when work gets quiet and Christmas puts its own demands on an already tight budget. I don't claim to be unique there. So I start looking for replacements that I can COUNT on being reliable and capable of doing the job properly (giving that the monkey behind them can learn to use them properly). I put about 18 months of research into the first L-N purchase, a 62, and I wasn't disappointed. The build quality blew me away. It performs way beyond my expectations, and I dare say I've hardly began to explore the full envelope of its' capabilities.
Having done the research and with a working example of performance and build quality to fall back on, subsequent purchases were so much easier.
When working with them, I've noticed 2 fundamental changes in my work, firstly; knowing that the tools can be relied upon to simply perform, i.e. no blade chatter, no tear out, no suddenly falling to bits in my hand, I can relax a bit and put all my focus into working on the board in question. Secondly, knowing that I'm working with very high quality tools that are not only absolutely reliable, but capable of achieving a far superior degree of flatness / quality of finish than I could ever dream of getting with the Stanleys, my expectations have risen considerably. Hopefully that's starting to be reflected in my work although I wouldn't presume to judge.
As a rookie, another major benefit of the L-N's is that when things DO go wrong, I know it's not the tool that's caused the fault, and look to improve my technique. There's a lot to be said in not only being comfortable with your tools, but being confident of their capabilities too.
To that end, I fully expect the next tool purchases to involve buying some Cliftons. They didn't earn a reputation for making some of the best shoulder planes by selling garbage.
