The screen refresh / icon painting didn't seem too slow to me. On booting it was obvious it's an early release, loads of debug info (some of which they quickly hid from the public).
Given the size of A-EON, the money needed to develop this board and the (tiny?) budget they must have for promotion, I think they did a fantastic job.
We should be celebrating Amiga and its offspring (X1000, NatAmi, MiniMig, Icaros etc) and be happy we have a future; not criticising every person/project/company that invests time, money and effort to develop and promote the platform.
Sure, the X1000 won't be cheap - but then small scale production will never compete with the economies of scale of the Intel world. At the high end we have the X1000, at the low end the Sam 460 (?); neither are 'cheap' but when you see the money people pay to tower A1200's, add PPC accelerators, Busboards, GFX cards, Ethernet, USB ... is such a cost really an issue?
If the OS issues are resolved and A-EON / Hyperion get the developers on board, this has real potential. As always the early adopters will pay a premium but I'd hope if successful the cost will reduce over time.
*shrug*
