It is the same thing with most consumer equipment.
The very first models sometimes still have a couple of glitches, and those normally become obvious very soon. But once those are ironed out, the early models tend to have very good build quality, and to have trouble-free and long lives.
It is only in subsequent models that they begin revising the design to find where cuts can be made.
Consumer equipment in general these days is hard to deal with, though. The worst thing is that everything is glued or riveted together, so the very act of dismantling it to make tests and an inspection will be destructive. The second problem is that everything tends to be in custom ICs so you end up having to replace a whole board, and that's if you are lucky enough to find a source.
That said, who thinks that the quality of electrolytic caps is getting poorer and poorer? I'm sure I've been noticing more failed ones in the last couple of years than previously.
