For researchers like me it’s an easy way to get a legged robot that just works for fairly cheap. One can then focus on perception/decision/control etc. without being a mechanical engineer.
Well they have $20,000+ addons for better Lidar range, on device compute etc. Doesn't seem all that cheap to do interesting things..
You can always buy and mount the lidar yourself. It is cheap for a working legged robot of this quality. Others (anymal comes to mind) are much more than that.