Hi,
i just gave Nox a try, and i have to tell that i am not very impressed. Speed is rather mediocre, (for example indigo renderer seems to be 2x - 3x faster) but most importantly, i cannot understand one thing. I saw a tutorial about Nox - 3ds Max workflow, and there was a hint "Global illumination usually renders too dim, so we have to correct it". I cannot understand how this is possible. If its supposed to be unbiased renderer (with some simplifications, as you stated) then there should not be such a thing as "too dim GI". There should only one GI intensity, the correct one. If you leave GI intensity in the state, where it needs to be tweaked by user, then you introduce very significant bias, way more serious then for example bias caused by interpolated GI technique. Stable and correct GI intensity is essential.
From my comparsions with other unbiased renderers (Indigo and iRay), it does not seem to behave correctly.
One more problem i see is a weird behaviour of daylight system. It looks too oversaturated, like if it was rendered non-linearly. I know its a dependent on camera response curve, but it still seems too much.
And lastly, for some reason, shadows from sun are completely hard and crisp by default. I do not have Nox explored deeply yet, but soft sun shadows should be there by default. Sun disc is not a point light.
Anyway, i wish you good luck. There is never enough of renderers to keep competition on their feet and running forward. I am believe that in final version, Nox will be production ready, stable and fast renderer. Evermotion was always a mark of quality. ;-)
