Something that I’ve learned over the years is that a lot of times what separates cheaper or more expensive brands or higher prestige brands from lower prestige brands is quality control.

In the world of guitars, for example, you can get some amazing deals if you’re willing to deal with buying a guitar that might need a lot of work to be set up properly after you bring it home. Or maybe you’ll be lucky and the one you get will be totally fine and require zero setup.

Nowadays for most products I just assume if I’m spending half the money I’m probably not getting half the value. Instead the lower price means I’m accepting the risk of a 70% chance of proper QC’d unit rather than 95% for the more expensive one.

The problem is it’s basically impossible to know the real rates for these things unless you’re a dealer who sees a high volume and can analyze return rates and stuff so it’s kind of a crapshoot. If I’m buying something I feel confident I can fix or upgrade myself (guitar) I’ll happily save a bunch of money and deal with the risk. A lot of people have that level of experience with 3d printers