Ithink that if you put a little more time and effort into building the kit you will have a superior product to the ARF. Production line building may or may not be making the kplane as fine as it can possibly be, it is making it as fast as it can for as little money. That is hopefully tempered by the learned skills of the assembler, doing the same wing joint all day every day would in my opinion make someone quite adept at doing it. However life is life and it doesnt always work out that way.
SIGmakes a lot of kits that Ihope to build some day. However I do have a Little Extra ARF that is a very well made little machine.