In my experience, with all things, not just guns, buying something new on the market is a mistake. Seems like it takes most companies awhile to get their stuff together in the way of quality and consistency.
I only have a couple factory built rifles. An Olympic Arms AR15 (XM177 clone) and a S&W M&P 15 in 5.45X39 (that little Russian caliber). Both are accurate and reliable.
The rest of them are built from kits or from a collection of parts bought from multiple vendors.
Yes, my first was the Olympic Arms carbine. Once I found out how accurate and reliable it was vs. the M16A1's I used in the US Army I had to build one. That one had some teething pains I had to work through. After those were fixed the accuracy and reliability was so far above the GI guns I used it led to another, and another, and another, etc., etc.
If you buy one and have issues you can call the maker and send it back (hopefully they'll fix it). If you build it yourself you pretty much have to figure out the problems and fix it. Not easy at first, but you get better with experience. And there's a great asset on the web for AR15. It's called AR15.com, or arfcom. Lot's of silliness there on some of the sub forums but the mods do a pretty good job of insuring the technical sub forums stay technical in nature/conversation/advice.
The cool thing about AR15's besides the obvious - all the different parts/pieces you can buy and install on your rifle.
Good luck with your first. Oh, it can be a disease. It's called BRD (Black Rifle Disease). Similar to CZD (CZ Disease). One, leads to two, two leads to three, three leads to four, etc., etc., etc.
