Yeah, I know what you mean as I used to get their ES line of car audio. All that Xplod stuff is the budget line jazzed up. The guts of this unit "appear" to be pretty decent though, especially with the pre-amp filtering and internal amp bypass. That's like having a built in electronic crossover and should add longevity by shutting down the onboard amp circuit. But the video features are awesome for a standard-size unit!