Very much smaller and lighter weight.
We did have a large transformer for it, but lugging that out and setting it up was a pain (although the transformer was twice the power it needed to be, which didn't help). The reason I use just the lower voltage part of the sine wave is to limit the peak voltage for the sake of the product's insulation - it's still higher than with real 120VAC, but not as high as it would be with something like a phase control dimmer.