The user interface on the 2GIG CG2 is nicer, the z-wave was more consistent, upgrades were more consistent, overall a more seamless experience.
Thank you for your follow up and confirmation regarding the log level. I understand frustration with a firmware update snag like this. It’s a really annoying issue to try and troubleshoot.
The interface notwithstanding, as that is user preference of course, I want to address the other points based on my experience as an installer and support rep.
On the whole, 2GIG GC2s had serious problems with firmware application. OTAs take hours, the update cable application was archaic even when it first came out. The panel update process is comparatively fragile, and issues often result in an irretrievably bricked panel rather than a bug.
As a direct comparison to the IQ Remote update problem in this thread, some GC2 firmware versions had significant issues where the GC2 would no longer process any 900Mhz device signals, causing all secondary panels to fail, requiring replacement of the main GC2 panel.
GC2 Z-wave was also (to me) less reliable overall. GC2s have issues where a power loss can delete the entire Z-wave device list. Rules failures were more frequent in my experience with GC2, especially sunset sunrise rules, though that may be influenced by ADC making improvements over time.
That said the GC2 is a good panel, working solidly for a long time for a lot of users, and we recommended it for a long time. I don’t think it compares favorably to the IQ Panel 2 or 4, but the GC2 is much older so a lot of that comes down to feature availability and hardware improvements.
This is definitely feedback I am happy to forward to Qolsys. Always good to identify frustrations to hopefully address and resolve.