Criticism of the review aside, I have no doubt the UI is awful* or that the unit is overpriced. And if there's any performance improvement (other than perhaps longevity), it probably doesn't matter to the average user IF the Hakko maintains tighter temperature control by a few degrees here or there.
It seems to me Hakko built their reputation on production soldering equipment like the 927/37 which probably eclipse all other stations in production quantity many times over when you include the clones. At this point what they have, besides reputation for tight quality control and name recognition, is credibility. A stable supply chain and the confidence that they will be around to sell replacement parts and honor warranties and the like. And huge corporate accounts for which the only person you need to convince is the guy in charge of purchasing. Schmooze his as much as you can get away with, and he don't care enough to do the actual work required to go somewhere else.
*I would guess there are 5 programmable presets on it, at least. It flashes "P-5" at one point. Perhaps this is more than adequate for most production uses. When you pay huge money to train new personnel and manage turnover, a setup like this vs "press button and do w/e you want" can make sense. Trying to manage a huge amount of labor can be quite challenging in keeping standards. Hakko probably knows a lot about this. Upfront cost of equipment like this is potentially small potatoes. It may be in use 16 hours a day, so figure the wages and whatnt of the guys wielding them. And that cost, in turn, could be peanuts vs what a 2 or 3% change in failure rate could cost the company for a given product. For every guy buying something like this to repair odd things, they probably sell many times over to a company which is doing huge batch production and it behooves a company to treat the lowest level workers like idiots who given a chance will screw something up, because they don't have access to failure percentages and profit margins. "Improvements" have to be verified before they are adopted, and if end users are making micro adjustments on their own whims, nothing will ever be verified.