New products can fall into one of two broad categories. 1) It is something totally new for the company (like when Denon released the MC6000 – it’s first attempt at an all-in-one), or 2) it’s a new generation of something they already do (to keep with the Denon example – the MC3000).
In scenario 1 early adopters may run into a few bugs, as there are only so many variations manufacturers can test their equipment under (everyone is running something slightly – or sometimes radically – different, and how it all interacts is hard to predict). While you might think a lot of firmware releases early on are a red flag, it’s actually a good sign the manufacturer is working with the customer base to quickly fix any issues that come up. You can also run into actual design problems with how a unit is built – these are much harder to fix (think problems with the original AA-VMS4).
In scenario 2, you are generally a lot more safe, as synthet1c pointed out, the tech behind the unit is well tested, so unless they totally screw up on build quality it’s a safer bet.
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