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Here’s my reasoning/opinion based on being a GEN 1 owner for probably the last 10+ years as well as someone that just got back there “upgrade“ Gen 2 gun.  At the time I bought mine originally, not only was it lightweight and folding/concealable, it was about your only option for a PCC inexpensively.  At that point you had the Sub2000 and then there was a lot between of MSRP between that and MP5 clones, colt 9mm AR15’s, and other guns that were more expensive.  Loved and still love the light weight and folding aspects of it, as well as taking pistol magazines, especially high capacity.  

What I didn’t like about the GEN 1 was how cheap and flimsy the pistol grip area was.  If you didn’t have a magazine in there providing support, it would often flex and spread apart a little when gripping it to fold or unfold the gun.  The plastic and texturing felt cheap.  The Front hand guard was usable but looked ugly and not very ergonomic. Also looked oversized and blocky.  No easy ability to mount rails onto it unless you wanted to add aftermarket rails yourself.  No threaded barrel so no chance of using suppressors, unless you wanted to pay a Smith to internally thread the barrel and then add a adapter($$$).  Front sight worked fine on mine but it’s not a very easily adjustable design and using a clamped piece of clear pink plastic as your front sight blade, surrounded by/protected by plastic, never seemed very durable.

So I sent back my Gen 1,  they destroyed it and slapped my serial number on a new Gen 2 gun along with an “A” after it.  Here are the improvements I definitely have noticed.  Threaded barrel obviously so now I can run a suppressor if I want to.  The second generation hand guards are so much more ergonomic for me, I prefer a thinner handguard and it makes the gun less bulky when folded.  Best comparison I could make is the new hand guard feels more like the thin free floated mlock/keymod ar15 hand guards that are popular now compared to the thick bulky, four sided Picatinny hand guards that were popular 10 to 15 years ago.  The new hand guards actually have rails built-in so that you could run a light/laser on the bottom rail and still have a not interfere with the folding.  The pistol grip and receiver area feels like it’s a more durable stiff polymer.  I don’t have any of the flexing that I felt in the Gen 1 gun.  The front sight assembly is now metal instead of plastic and the front site post is a thin metal post like in the AR15.  The trigger itself feels may be a little sturdier but not much has changed as far as the trigger pull.  The rear stock is a lot nicer.  You can actually adjust the length of pull a little bit.  I also like the new folding latch release mechanism.  And finally maybe it’s just me but it seems like when you unfold the gun the reciever latches into place with much more of a positive click then the old gun.  

It’s about what I expected based on my research.  They improved or fixed a lot of the things I didn’t like about the first generation that were easy fixes.  They added some features like the threaded barrel, which would’ve probably cost me 150 to have done anyway on the old gun.  And finally I now have a new gun with a zero round count, compared to my old one that had 3k+ rounds through it.  All in all, definitely worth $150.