They make quality stuff for the prices, an old job got a bioreactor (basically a carboy for homebrewing wired with sensors & computer-controlled pumps) for $25k from a Chinese manufacturer. They later sold it to the Open Insulin project & used the money to buy a textured vegetable protein extruder from China to make vegan deli meats. Both had kinda wonky unintuitive user interfaces, but they were solid pieces of hardware
The one sub I miss. Wish there was a hexbear comm for it, as the lemmy.ml one has like 3 active users before it died over a year ago