I no longer answer this type of question as any answer just reflects the bias of the person answering the question.

We're lucky today to have a wide variety of engines that can provide excellent service and I own engines from both the so called premium vendors and the established Chinese vendors. I never buy any product when it first appears on the market but prefer to wait until the bugs are well worked out before considering a purchase. When browsing the forums, I prefer to ignore bad comments from inexperienced users but value comments from those with an established record .... those who know what they're talking about. With those few comments, I'd suggest a user has to make up his own mind regarding whether the premium engines are worth the extra $$ or whether the lower cost alternatives are a good way to go. Yes, I've owned several DA engines over the years but currently the remaining DA is a 100 twin which is certainly a very good engine.