It looks better with the display. One has to take into account the dimensions of that front panel – it is pretty large and without the display, there is virtually nothing on it, making the proposition even less appealing. It won’t win any industrial design awards either way, that’s for sure.
Someone here mentioned leveraging the economies of scale as a potential reasoning behind the button layout. Let me tell you, any ‘economy of scale’, in any sense, doesn’t apply to any of the products made by manufacturers as small as this. It should not and cannot be a justification for anything. If you want your product to look the part, you hire an industrial designer, that’s how it’s done, especially in the ‘luxury industries’ such as HIFI.
Now, I like the minimalist approach and I even appreciated it at the time when Bryston, compared to say Pass Labs, offered the same for less. Now, at least in the EU, Bryston is offering the same for more and that as sure as hell changes where I stand on this.