Help me pick a dual extruder printer

[curious aardvark]

for one thing the formbot uses the proper prusa i3 engineering.
I know I bang on about thsi to the point that people just assume I'm being paid by josef.
But it's because from a mechaical and engineering point of view - it's significantly faster, more stable and has better precision that the crippled i3's creality insist on making.

I have a plywood framed i3 made with components so cheap most people would have changed them before even powering the machine up.
But because it's the prusa design it will print - accurately and consistently at 0.3mm layer height and 200mm/s.
Most people with creality machines seem to think that 70mm's is fast.
My replicator pro clone prints at 70mm/s and the print carriage on that has 2 nema 17s, two hotends and 2 extruders. It's a seriously heavy, slow moving beast. And even that is as fast as a creality cr10 !

So these things Matter.

so: direct drive extruder, proper printbed side supports and dual z motors (to be fair, the cr10 series have dual z motors).
The rest of the formbot components are better quality.

And - very few people come here and say: 'I've just bought a formbot - why doesn't it print properly.'
Plus it's IDEX.

Now at the moment, if I were strapped for cash (and to be honest I'd have to gain money to even get up to the 'strapped' level)

I'd be seriously looking at the Hictop D3 Hero: https://www.hic3dprinter.com/product...-dual-extruder
Again, it's a full prusa design i3 with idex for under $700.

I have no knowlege of reliability or much else beyond a few youtube videos - most pretty positive, nobody saying Don't buy this - and the stated specification.
Oh and it has Linear rails !
The sapphire pro I've just picked up has linear rails - oh man ! Are those things buttery smooth !
Wheels ? we don' need no steenkin' wheels !
;-)

But at the end of the day - it's a large idex made with easy to source standard components that - on paper - look pretty reasonable.And I can;t emphasise how much difference the liner rails must make to a standard i3 wheeled print carriage.
Fast, smooootthhh and ultra stable. There is no way you should ever get carriage rock on this baby.

Okay, so on balance, taking the $1300 price differential - I've just talked myself into the hictop and out of the t-rex :-)