One appeal is the o-rings cut are in the head so its a bolt on upgrade to close the very large squish on 250r motors, plus I prefer o-rings over head gaskets. Its also much easier to chuck up a coolhead dome in a lathe to cut then it is to setup a factory head on a plate.
If Pro-design would just stop putting the cooling fins on the domes and left more material for strength then they would not have the problems they sometimes have.
The lower compression heads are thinner due to more material cut away for the larger combustion area and heads that are run under frequent detonation conditions are the ones failing.
The other coolhead down side is the water passages are not sized to direct flow like the factory gasket does,so filling the water passage on the head with epoxy and sizing them like a factory head gasket is a worth while effort