Kevin, I for one appreciate a company who does some "in-field" testing by real users before releasing a product to production. Having worked for a scientific instruments company for almost 15 years, I can tell you there was more than one instrument released into production that was not as well-designed as it could have been if it had incorporated some real-world testing.
As far as charging for it, I suspect that is being done to ensure that they get people who actually want to be vested into the idea of a product tester. If they provided it for free, they would get all kinds of people who would sign up just to get something for free, vs someone who would actually provide valuable feedback.
Based on my experience in industry, I suspect they have already "beta-tested" the mechanical aspects of this unit and are now seeking feedback on the firmware interface / features, things like is the user interface as intuitive as it can be, could the menus be more streamlined, etc. Once they have the initial product launch firmware version locked down, any person who has purchased a unit under their testing program, can easily upgrade to a full production unit with a simple firmware upgrade...
