I don’t agree with your premise that the performance and functionality is so far below every competitor. That is not my experience. What are you basing your claim on?

They are well made machines with high quality components and are in most cases perfectly capable of going as fast as the plastic allows. And if they don’t, a few minor upgrades to the hardware will get them flying as they’re typically mostly going to be hotend-limited. Are you competing the actual realistic maximum acceptable performance of comparable machines that have been independently tested by an experienced reviewer, or are you comparing numbers someone copied from marketing? Because these are not the same thing and only one of them actually reflects reality.

As far as functionality, the only feature I see wanting in Prusa’s lineup is IDEX, which I prefer over toolswitchers for making large numbers of small parts. I keep hoping their next model will be a spiffy little IDEX model, but no luck so far.

Prusa is tuned for reliability and consistency. They occupy a weird and illogical niche, for people who don’t want to have to tinker with their machines AT ALL but want to have the ability to. I personally fit in this niche, and I love my Prusa, but they really don’t make a ton of sense for most people I think, and there are probably better choices if you don’t fall into this niche.