Makes me smile.
The people that really slag off cheap pressure barrels for leaking and loosing pressure are the ones that:
Spend hours making brewing fridges,
calibrate and calibrate again temp control equipment because their mash temp may vary 1/2 a degree off what it should be over 5 hrs,
Research for days the chemical makeup of their water, till it's no longer just water,
(I could go on)
But can't or aren't willing to spend half an hour prepping a pressure barrel so it doesn't leak or loose pressure,
Said a bit tongue in cheek but you get my point.
Hows this then, and this is not slightly tongue in cheek, since I am known for slagging off 'cheap' PBS....
1. I haven't got a brew fridge
2. I dont spend hours calibrating equipment (I havent got much complicated stuff)
3. Don't spend days preparing a water treatment schedule.
And there's no need for me to go on because my approach to brewing is quite simple
And I know all about prepping PBs, for what its worth I wrote the Forum Guide. As for leaks and from where they come from, I have had bodies that split on the seams, bodies with pinhole leaks, both rendering the PB useless, let alone caps that split. Finding a leak from a gasket (which shouldn't happen if you prepped the PB) is in fact relatively easy if you use the soapy water test.
So when I buy something and look after it (especially since in this case I never overpressurised my PBs) I don't expect it to fail on me so that its unusable after two years of limited use, as has happened to me with four out of four PBs.
And that is the reason I slag them off, justifiably so, because they are not really fit for purpose, and really shouldn't need endless fettling and fiddling and keeping 20 litres of bottles on standby in case the PB fails. And certainly nothing to do with anything else.
Therefore I dont get your point at all.