Quoted from Atomicboy:I totally get why companies are going this way obviously, as it's cheaper, but of course with Stern this will somehow turn into another head scratching price increase as well.
I disagree. If you look at their board, several of the chips they use aren't even available in through-hole. Surface mount isn't just about price. There are a lot of engineering advantages to surface mount. You are so focused on this particular board being SMD, you haven't really looked at what's going on.
The board pictured is just the CPU board, not the driver board. I don't see any High Voltage or drive transistors on the pictured board. I also don't see any batteries. The communication between the CPU board and driver boards is presumably done via some type of serial bus over one of the CAT5/6 cables.
Without batteries and no drive transistors on this board, what are you expecting to have to repair? Seems to me like acid damage, blown transistors, and blown logic chips are 99% of the MPU repairs, and none of those seem like they will be an issue with this CPU board.
We have yet to see the driver board where the drive transistors sit, so I can't claim that it's through hole. Even if it's not, if you can solder a through hole transistor, you can solder a surface mount one.
tl;dr - I think you are worrying for nothing.