I agree with you mostly about why it would be expensive, but Teenage Engineering doesn't have a reputation for building reliable devices. I own an OP-1, owned t

I agree with you mostly about why it would be expensive, but Teenage Engineering doesn't have a reputation for building reliable devices. I own an OP-1, owned two POs and considered getting an OP-Z only to be scared away by all the reports about poor hardware quality and support. The OP-Z plastic casing apparently bends. Sometimes it comes like that out of the factory (or more likely gets that way during storage and transport) often times it bends with use. This means that buttons will slide out of position, keys will trigger multiple times, etc. The manufacturer doesn't have any solution to the above problem and returning it for a replacement may result in a straight case or more of the same. All signs indicate that it's a design defect, but TE haven't recognised this and they're getting punished in reviews. The POs are flimsy, and the knobs tend to be imprecise and "jump" between values. One came with rust on a metal part because of TEs creative open packaging which exposes the devices to the surrounding environment. The OP-1 itself seems solid as far as hardware goes so far, but it has other issues. It's noisy for one, which goes against claims of audio quality. The software's buggy and it records clicks together with the incoming audio, especially when recording external instruments. These are all well known problems. And given that the OP-1 is supposed to be a synth, or at least a groovebox, it's surprisingly hard to create good sounding patches with it.