I own a couple of Prusa and my work has I have lost count more than 20.
I have never needed to mod or alter mine, I send a print and forget it. I never wait for the first layer to start I never worry about it. I don’t spend much time messing with it.
I have been upgrading it from a MK3 to MK3S to a MK3S+ and comtiplating the MK3.5 or 3.9 or MK4.
My experience is the creality and most of the Chinese made the end user are the beta testers and R and D there is basically no tech support or it is so slow as to be non existent, my experience was 7 week for a reply. ridiculous.
Prusa runs a print farm of 300 of their printers running 24/7 they are constantly updating firmware and slicer to improve the quality and experience of the user. The reliability is from the farm running so many printers all the time if there is an issue they will find it and correct it.
My experience with tech support was fantastic they sent a replacement part in 24 hours and it took 15 mins to get a reply.
I priced a Prusa myself, all name brand parts no clones nothing inferior in any way. By the time I ordered and paid for shipping I was more than the cost of a Prusa, it is cheaper to buy from them than buy independently.
I don’t have tons of time. I can’t afford to buy a ‘cheap’ printer (again) and spend a stupid amount of time and money (2x the purchase price in parts!!!) to get it making mediocre prints.