Well, I agree that a lot of healthy competition could probably kick the industry hard enough in the pants to make companies stop putting out flawed products. As it is, we have DAP's on the market like the Studio V, the C4, the DX100 and the DX50 which are full of UI flaws. The AK120 seems to be running alright although its not without the odd burp once in a blue moon. The Calyx, the X5 and Sony's newest top tier DAP has me intrigued. For the time being I'm just gonna wait, watch and listen to what everyone else has to say about those.
An update involving the DX50: I recently updated to the latest FW and after weeks of it lying around collecting dust my DX50 is finally working at an acceptable level. The card scanning issues seem to be fixed and its freezing a lot less then it used to. I can now go 6 or 7 hours without having to do a reboot. The sound, I'd still rate it a step above an iPod but its still nowhere near being the giant killer some people seem to think it is. I'm still noticing tag issues on some of my files which aren't an issue on my other players, mostly artist isn't being displayed. I don't know, guess if I play around with some creative tagging the problem might get solved. Is the FW update enough to make me change my mind about the DX50? The honest truth is the overall experience I had with my unit coupled with the iBasso lackluster customer support and the less then cordial comments I received on my YouTube channel from the fan boys left me with a very sour taste in my mouth. If iBasso had been more diligent and had taken just a little more time with the OS before releasing this player my opinion of iBasso wouldn't have been so harsh. As it is, I'm treating all this as a learning experience and I consider myself lucky that in the end my unit is functional enough to be used for what it was intended for, enjoying my music on the go. Would I recommend the DX50? My recommendation still remains very guarded, meaning if I had the choice to do it all over again I would look elsewhere.