I have to agree with the blue cartoon above me, yeah Xray etc has the fancy extra stuff, but damn don't you ever pay for it and a half, no one doubts the quality of higher end kits and their support, but look at the price you can buy a Photon for.
And seriously, having built and run my Photon, from what I have seen with other kits, it's not lacking bugger all where it counts against anything else.
Thrown in some great refinements, like early use of a lipo chassis, it seems bigger brands are still catching up on that one, or hang on a sec still need to buy a lipo chassis, for how much?, err dude my kits came with two of them for less than your base kit, oh and I still just adore the lipo battery holders, sure it's an add on, but for club racing it's just so easy to use...
On the down side, my car chewed a pulley on the side of the spur the other night, last meet of the year and only got in two runs, not sure what happened, maybe a rock or the side cover coming loose, made a mess and I had no spares, so it will be time for a big once over and mild rebuild, maybe time for my gear diffs, going to be a strange year next year here with many rule changes, need me a 17.5 but I'm unsure how much I'll like zero timed 17.5.