Three days ago, my super expensive Apex decided that it was going to randomly turn on my lights at night. Then it would shut one off, then the other shortly thereafter. Then it would repeat the cycle a few minutes later. I had to set the switched outlet to the lights to OFF to stop that from happening. As such, I don't think it's worth the kind of money they charge on the full/complete model when a device that worked fine for weeks/months with no programming changes made may randomly decide "Starting now I will burn your corals with full intensity light for minutes at a time dozens of time per hour at night or all day for a week or so until you just happen to notice." Right now, if it's not going to ramp up and down properly when it's supposed to, a couple of 10$ mechanical timers would arguably handle my lights better, simpler, and more reliably. That's not exactly a glowing endorsement for a several hundred dollar controller.
As more and more manufacturers remove the 0-10V controls on their equipment and come up with their own integrated control method it becomes even harder to justify spending the cash on a full blown reef controller that cannot access/control all your equipment's features, assuming it can control any of them besides cutting power to the outlet.
As such, your best bang for the buck may well be a "lesser" system that acts more as a failsafe or even just as a monitor. Get an industrial pH controller for example, then use the reef controller to also monitor pH and send a notification and possibly cut power to the industrial controller/outlet if something goes way off. Same with temperature, or other items. As more manufacturers make their own control systems that don't tie into Apex, this is essentially the model you're going to be using anyway. This is making the lower end model controllers much more viable than they used to be as the 800$ controller may just end up a bunch of extra features that either can't work, or don't make sense to use, with your newer equipment.
