Thanks for the thoughtful and thorough post!!! This is what quality posting is all about. 
I went this route too and was wildly disappointed in the options I had. I ended up going with Creality PI because for under $65, it was the least suckiest choice. I posted a side by side here.
Yeah… in the words of Forest Gump, “Stupid is as Stupid Does”. Let’s be candid, these idiots, and I choose that word deliberately. Are aiming at the lowest common denominator buyer. They are looking for pretty, not functional. All of these latest generation boxes like the Sunlu and PI are made by the same industrial designer and forgot that when designing something, form is far less important than function. But so long as there are fools willing to part with their money rather than rewarding quality, products like this will continue to dominate the market.
However, in my case, the completely stupid lid design for the Creality Pi was too much for me so I designed a stop for it. It can be found here
I included STEP files so that others can improve on the version and I see that at least one person already copied it with adaptations(although they didn’t give me credit😠).