User blog comment:DS21200/What everyone seems to forget.../@comment-1388547-20120521172815

The Collectors had access to Reaper technology, but I doubt they had the best stuff. All they needed was hardware that was good enough to beat the current galactic state of the art, so they could save time and resources by using a lower-quality but easier-to-build ship. Also, there was always the possibility that Collector technology could be captured and reverse-engineered by the organic races -- just like the Thanix cannon was reverse-engineered from Sovereign -- so the Reapers would have a very good reason to keep their best hardware to themselves.