What really turned off my enthusiasm toward A1222 after AmiWest was general enthusiasm toward emulation of AmigaOS4.1 as a GOOD method of running AmigaOS. So, what is a point of developing ANY hardware for AmigaOS4.1? That was my impression.
I've been running AmigaOS 4.1 in WinUAE for a while, and I wouldn't call the experience "good". Biggest limitation is slow/limited I/O, and lack of hardware 3D and compositing. In terms of raw CPU performance, my Ryzen 1800X desktop is about 50% of the X5000 performance running Sortbench, but I/O and video are very slow compared to real hardware so the overall experience is slow, choppy and limited.
I think they're just trying to expand the reach of OS4 by having a cheap, convenient method of running AmigaOS 4. Plus the Alice laptop is nearly finished while the A1222 is not.
Of course in theory, emulation could be expanded until it becomes really good. Implement pass-through for the GPU and storage, with the only emulated part being the PPC CPU itself rather than trying to emulate a full A4000 with Blizzard PPC. But that doesn't seem to be the route they are going.