A Deva or Cantar would be nice, but I'm happy so far with the SD722, which is also too big for some uses. It is the pocketable form factor of the MiniR82, with the Sax name and reputation, that attracted me.
I was just the opposite, the 744 didn't have enough preamps for me. Which is why I started looking around for other options. Honestly, there isn't a slouch in the group (Aanton, Zaxcom, Sound Devices, or Sonosax) that we're talking about. Over the past few years I don't think there has been a single Academy Award won by a sound mixer that hasn't been done on either the Cantar or Deva, and Zaxcom has an Oscar for technology sitting it's office, so for me it's not a reputation thing. All the companies we're talking about qualify as cream of the crop. Where you do have legit issues is size. If you don't like the size of the 722, then none of the other options are going to cut it for you, except the Sonosax. If I remember correctly though, they have a lot of pigtails coming out of the device, so I'm not sure how much you really gain by having a ton of cables all hanging out of a small device vs. having them all plugged into a unit.
Wayne