. . . partly on a personal, sentimental, brand level (early conditioning is hard to break, and I can't help it, I just get a kick out of that little cyclops date magnifier ;-) ) and on another level, I would respectfully disagree that the in house movement is irrelevant, in an absolute sense.
In the first place, IMVHO in-house or not may very well be a relevant factor to someone, and if it is, it is -with the caveat that one is better off having a sense of such issues as the extent to which any given brand is vertically integrated, the ebauche tradition in watchmaking, et cetera ad nauseam.
In the second place, I have lost track of the number of industry professionals I have met who have nothing but praise for the technical quality of Rolex movements. These run the gamut from luxury brand watchmakers/service specialists, to technical development executives, to marketing and executive director/CEO level personnel.
I think they're something of a victim of their own success, in that a brand that's a great marketing success tends to sooner or later evoke suspicion that there's no meat in the sandwich, so to speak, but my own personal experience as an owner and my limited exposure to feedback from industry professionals with no particular reason to praise Rolex other than genuine respect for their technical development ability is that there is perhaps a bit more genuine (haha, whatever THAT means) VFM there than you might be inclined to think from their success as a brand.
Mind you, I also think that as fashionable as it is to turn up one's nose at the Valjoux/ETA 7750, for instance, you would be hard pressed from a technical standpoint to find a more robust chronograph movement, and they are generally (again, anecdotal discussions with a number of industry professionals) excellent ratekeepers as well.
Branding success and ubiquity do not necessarily imply poor value for the money. Indeed, I would go so far as to suggest that every once in a while, they may actually result from it ;-) .
Cheers,
Jack