A friend of mine has just bought a C182 with the canard kit (N-reg) and while he traded a superb IFR tourer for it (a TB20GT ) to him it is worthwhile because he can fly it from his 400m garden whereas previously he had a 1hr drive to his airport, and his trips are mostly short; say 300nm.
That bird is so weird, you will always attract a crowd at airports and get very used to explaining the concept of canard wings
I wonder why nobody has come up with foldable canards, that should eliminate most of the slowdown in cruise.
Re turbo normalisation, the TB21 is also TN but few (any?) make TBO without new cylinders. I don't know why; I assume it's because people fly them as they are meant to fly them
There have been many cases of bad cylinders in the last few years. If you outsource your whole national industry to China, it gets harder and harder to produce quality products... I don't think TN should have an impact on cylinder/engine life. Consider that the TSIO-540 can produce up to 350hp so the TB21 variant has a rather low power rating. The important thing is keeping CHT below 400°F at all times and this requires good instrumentation + understanding. I don't know how effective the TB21's engine cooling is. The 182RG POH states a CHT limit of 500°F which is completely insane. The factory instrumentation is totally useless with a single, uncalibrated CHT probe.
Socata's products are very well engineered with good finnish. Much better than the rest I would say.
I would have looked at the TB20 (the TB21 is not worth it IMO, poor payload) and the DA40/42 but they just don't fit a family with luggage. There isn't much choice for an IFR family tourer in the 4 seat category.
Manual flaps DON'T 'save' you from visually checking flaps. You've missed the point - with your low hours it's easier to form habits. It's a good habit to form visually checking the set position accords to the handle/lever detent.
I admit that I rarely check my flaps pre flight. When questioned by copilots, I ask them what they would do if the flaps didn't retract. Cancel the flight? There are 182 RG operators that never use flaps unless the runway is short to not put unnecessary stress on the flap rails.
While I really don't like the PA28 family for all the reasons given, I kind of like their flap system, very simple and direct. Did most of my IFR training on PA28s at large airports with minimum 140KIAS on final and it was a real challenge finding that lever on the floor, pulling it with force and at the same time trying to not lose the glideslope
What I hate most about the PA28 is the position of the fuel selector. Just the other day a PA28 crashed short of our airfield because the pilot forgot about it and the tank ran empty on final. Stupid pilot for sure but the Cessnas rule out that issue.