The combined effect of these two sections of your post are the reason that your posting is sometimes problematic. All "complaints" are valid on their face, while "praise" is only posted by fictitious posters.
I've said it once, and I'll say it again - my experience with the PicoBrew
company (including Kevin & others) was almost universally positive. I bought their device secondhand, and they stood behind it despite never having received a dime from me. Thats the reason why I decided to buy into the Z1 presale within the first hour of it going live - despite the fact that their previous kickstarter still had yet to deliver almost a year after the fact (and around six months late).
That said, my experience with the
Zymatic has been somewhat mixed. It is (was) the perfect piece of brewing equipment for my use case, but definitely had flaws. I had the device for two-ish years - brewing maybe once a month on average - and managed to go through two step filters because of cracks. Grain often got caught in the poppets of the return ball lock quick disconnect causing issues with draining - in some cases ruining brew days.
For me, the bargain that I had to make was between the convenience the Zymatic provided in terms of my ability to execute a brew day and the risk that came with it that I wouldn't ultimately end up with a beer. For me, the ability to reclaim that time was the reason that this bargain tilted in favor of the Zymatic - even with the periodic failed brew day the net balance skewed in its favor.
All that said, it's possible to acknowledge that there are things the product or company can do better while simultaneously acknowledging the things that they do well, and it's possible to praise the things the company does right without being a "fictitious user."
When the Zymatic was sold, it was sold as having the feature set that it delivered. While there are always additional features that might be nice, part of the issue is that for every person this feature set is going to be different. They did add features such as "delayed start" as well as a reworked recipe editor after release, as well as partially redesigned step filters on the hardware front. Would I have liked to see more (including a completely redesigned step filter, perhaps?) - absolutely - but I didn't buy in expecting to receive anything other than what existed when I paid.
The one feature I
am bitter about is their failure to open source the firmware. While I am not an expert I do have some experience with
embedded device development as well as
web interfaces to hardware and would have loved the opportunity to take a stab at adding features that I might want (even if others wouldn't, necessarily). Had I been a kickstarter participant I might have standing to be angry about this - the fact that I only came in later means I am stuck on the sidelines glaring in.