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Marcel,
You've made the right decision. When I got my Orion XT12i 18 months ago, the only Chinese non premium scope Truss/collapsibles were the 12/16" Lightbridges. However I was swayed to the solid tube Orion 12" by the Intelliscope and as a beginner who knew nothing about collimation, I was worried about the talk of Trusses needing to be collimated more often. While I am glad I got the Orion Intelliscope as it turned out the 'Thrill of the hunt' was more like the 'frustration of the hunt' for me with regard to starhopping, I quickly realised that my main reason for not getting a 12 or 16" Lightbridge which was the fear of collimation was a moot point. While collimation sounds hard I got the hang of it in no time at all.
The only problem with my Orion solid tube was space in the car. While I could fit it in with the back seats folded down, between the OTA and the base, there was not much room for very much else.
Now that my fear of collimation was gone I started to investigate the scope that could have been my first scope instead of the Orion had it not been for my fear of collimation, the LB16. After carefull measurements of my car and after finding out the dimensions of the LB16 from others, I realised that this 16" scope because it could be broken down, would fit in my car a lot better than a solid tube 12". Instead of 1/4 the interior space being available for accesories, I would have 1/2 the space free!
More space and all that extra apeture to boot!! A short while later the bubble was slightly burst when I got to compare my 12" Orion with a Premium 20". I was massively surprised how well my 12" held its own when comparing the views on several objects. I realised that the improvement in views is not linear. ie. Big improvement in views from say 4" to 8" and 8" to 12" but after 12" in apeture the law of diminishing returns kicks in big time. You just don't get the same level of improvement as you step up in apeture above 12" while at the same time from 12" upwards the price and size and weight of scopes increases exponentially. ie. 4" apeture upgrades are worthwhile from the smallest scopes up to 12" but from then on you really need to be jumping 10" for the views of the bigger scope to really blow you away. Sure, there is improvement in some objects with smaller jumps but to be able to see amazing new detail in most objects requires much bigger apeture jumps.
Anyway, I ended up getting an LB16 anyway because like I said, it fit the car much better and because I got a brand new one for the price of a 12". I did not get it for the extra apeture though because if I didn't see much differance between my Orion 12" and the premium 20", I certainly wouldn't see much differance between my 12" and a 16" except on a handfull of objects.
Thus I think cheap chinese 12" are the goldilocks scopes with regard to the price performance ratio.
You have the benefit of more choice with regard to trusses and collapsibles than I did.
If it was me deciding on my first big scope right now, with what I have learned about apeture, different types of scopes like dob/newts/sct's refractors etc, and that I preferred dobs but liked pushto/goto and tracking. I have had to add these tom my LB16 at significant extra cost. Well if I was deciding now, I'd be waiting for the 12-14" Skywatcher Collapsible Flextube Auto. Collapsible to fit in the car, Goldilocks 12/14" apeture, tracking built in adding only 2 hundred or so to the cost instead of the 7 or 8 hundred I have spent for rtacking with an EQ platform for my scopes, and once they work out the bugs, Skywatcher will make available their Syscan handset upgrade for this scope for about 200 which will bring its 40,000 object database and full goto to this scope!! A mere fraction of what any other 12" goto SCT would cost.
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