When comparing Magit vs tig, the Slant community recommends tig for most people. In the question“What are the best Git clients for Windows?” tig is ranked 5th while Magit is ranked 6th. The most important reason people chose tig is:
If you prefer to do most of your development inside the terminal, changing windows to move to a GUI git client can be annoying. Since tig runs inside the terminal, that's avoided.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Uninterrupted workflow for common tasks
Simple tasks, such as commits, can quickly be made without leaving the editor.
Pro Diffs are easy
Since it's integrated with Emacs, diffs are very easy to fix. You can jump right to any file you want to fix as soon as it comes up in the logs or in the status view.
Pro Easy to remember mnemonics
You can easily learn the mnemonics for the most common tasks and use them to your advantage to speed up your workflow.
Pro Better visualization and interactive workflow
Pro Stage hunks or even just parts of a hunk using a single key press
In Magit staging a hunk or even just part of a hunk is very easy.
Magit also implements several other "apply variants" in addition to staging and unstaging. For example: you can also discard or reverse a change, or apply it to the working tree.
Pro Blame information can be viewed inline with the file
Pro Multiple buffers are used to show contextual information
Pro Powerful rebasing
Pro Available in Homebrew
brew install magit
Pro Allows you to stay in the terminal
If you prefer to do most of your development inside the terminal, changing windows to move to a GUI git client can be annoying. Since tig runs inside the terminal, that's avoided.
Pro Fast
Pro Vim-like bindings
Pro Available in Homebrew
Can easily be installed with homebrew simply by running brew install tig
Pro Works on any platform
Cons
Con Useful only for people who use Emacs
Magit is only useful if your text editor of choice is Emacs. It wouldn't really make any sense to open up emacs just to run Magit if you use another editor.
Con Steeper barrier to entry as compared to a GUI solution
Since you have to get used to working in the terminal (if you are not already used to doing that) and learn the commands, it has a steeper learning curve than GUI clients which are usually more intuitive and easier to grasp.