That's entirely subjective of course. One thing is clear, is that 290 and 290X will benefit tremendously from better coolers - so whenever the aftermarket editions arrive, we'll see the true muscle of the Hawaii chip. That being said when you're talking better overall product, like I said - subjective. There are a lot of metrics to consider such as software, value added features, acoustics, etc etc etc and it all adds up in the total package. Having used NV for a while I see why people really like NV. It's just really polished with tons of little touches - I hope AMD pushes software harder, they're not up to NV's level yet, although they've improved in the past year.
I do agree that the 290 is a hell of a card for 400$, but as i've said 100 times I can't believe AMD threw that cheesy cooler on there. Both the 290 and 290X could have been 5 out of 5 star GPUs with nary a complaint with a better reference blower, but now we are where we are. I guess that can be overlooked by most folks given the incredible price/performance of the 290, though.
I'm just torn on the 290 and 290X. I wanted to like them and performance wise I do like them. As far as overall package though? Man, AMD should not have put that plastic blower on these cards.