I have been using vxdiag vcx se for bmw for a year now and I’ve been very happy with it. It’s a very good alternative device.
The vcx se BMW scanner was bought directly from vxdiag website and came in 6 days (they claim that they have a warehouse in the US and UK. ).
Price is very good, definitely an icom killer.
All drivers are on their website https://www.vxdiagshop.com/info/vxdiag-diagnostic-software-download-4048.html
It works with all models. Update F series using ISTA+ no problem. I tried i-level software update on f32 and it works fine.
It is possible to run the ISTA software from an external hdd but expect it to work slower. I tried it on external hdd as didn’t have enough space on my macbook, it worked just fine but much slower, so I ended up replacing my macbook’s ssd to 1tb.