I'm looking at their roadmap:
It's pointing that they are at the very beginning stages of development. From the road-map perspective, they really have nothing accomplished at all. For them to be taking pre-orders on something that isn't even finalized or proven to work yet, throws a huge red flag right here. They're basically collecting money to fund the engineering development. Scariest part is that the project could fail and they can run away with your money. With a Q2/Q3 shipping schedule, that's one aggressive timeline considering how much is left to accomplish ahead of them.
If you truly believe in them, I sure hope that I'm just outright wrong here. Best of luck to you and just please be careful with these type of pre-orders.
Take Kickstarter projects for examples. A lot of companies already have their product finalize and they are just trying to get funds for manufacturing on a large scale. Even then a lot of projects would still take over 6+ months just to get the manufacturing portion part down. I would take extra precaution with Alpha Technology. The chances of them over promising and under deliver the actual product is very high.
I do understand the model of:
1. build prototype
2. film and market prototype
3. raise money
4. manufacture and distribute.
Most kickstarted projects are on phase 2 of this cycle. But not all. You could film or 3d render a concept, then start taking pre-orders. This happens a lot in real estate. If you order now, you would be a pre-seed early adopter. Taking a risk of buying something that hasn't even been manufactured yet, and hoping for a huge upside. That's what this is all about.