It's been a while since I tried it, but I remember this roughly being my experience as well.
I'm usually all for up to date software, but on my networking equipment??? I don't really want to beta test that stuff, but that's what they seem to want to make me do.
It is not really beta software though. If you don't want to go into the trouble of building your own ISO, then, yes, you are a beta tester because the only thing they make available pre-built is the ISO from the 1.4 branch which is in flux.
You can build the ISO from the LTS branch though and that branch doesn't move much. Though, I don't know how you can tell which commit was used to release, say v1.3.2. For the moment, I simply build an LTS ISO using the latest commit of the LTS branch. That strategy has been rock solid for years now.
I'm usually all for up to date software, but on my networking equipment??? I don't really want to beta test that stuff, but that's what they seem to want to make me do.