If stern would stop cutting every corner they can AND raising prices, everyone would love them to death. The cheapness of their product is often shocking. For example, my IMDNLE plumb bob threads disintegrated in my hand the first time I tried to adjust it. When I looked at it, I realized it's made of some sort of compressed composite that is worse than Chinese pot metal. It's as if they have some company in China that has children gathering metal from the hills and pressing bobs for them. Also, the power supply is absolute garbage, and the mechs are made of crap metal too.
For the record, I love playing Sterns, but they do not have to skimp on hardware like this. JJP games have their issues too, but the issues are not related to finding the absolute cheapest path to production. I'm waiting for the Stern nodes to start failing. Then we'll see how happy all the Stern customers are. Again, I want to love Stern, but their hardware often sucks. Someone else needs to compete at their price range to smarten them up.