I don’t think this is necessarily true. The Taz 3 costs less (~$150 from the BOMs) for LulzBot to produce so it probably isn’t a “better” machine - besides the heated bed upgrade which was in the works for a while and there was a thread on here about it. hotend no longer heats up - #19 by jebba
Edit: sorry I didn’t see that the 2.1 included “labor” so 3.1 is actually more expensive to produce.
Try preheating it with a hair dryer or putting a sweater on it while it is heating up. 15 mins eh? I’m glad you mentioned that because it makes my stripboard heater (Thingiverse - Digital Designs for Physical Objects) seem not so bad!