Honestly don't know - they certainly were more costly than a normal setup. I'm afraid I am new to bee husbandry so I won't have too many useful thoughts in terms of comparisons. The ones I have are a plastic (or nylon?) frame with pre-made plastic/nylon uncapped honeycombs split vertically down the middle - the bees just fill them and cap them. When you insert the "key" and turn it, it splits the frame in half vertically (one half slides upwards from the other half by a small amount), which cracks the seal on the fake honey cells and allows the honey to flow out to a hole in the bottom of the box.
Seemed to me at the time of setup to be a whole lot easier and less stressful on the bees than what was described to me by the bee guy as being the traditional approach to collecting the honey.
I guess the thing will be how long they last/work as intended before needing to be replaced. Hopefully a long time - they aint cheap.
James.