Interestingly enough for a while the knock-off cubes were markedly better than the official one. The official mechanism used to require a quite good alignment t

Interestingly enough for a while the knock-off cubes were markedly better than the official one. The official mechanism used to require a quite good alignment to allow turns. The knockoff mechanisms had a spring under the center pieces essentially allowing the cube to "stretch" some, which in turn allows you to force a turn with just about any misalignment up to 40 degrees. Of course these days rubiks official cubes use that same mechanism.