There's no bottom line - there's good, better and poorer Neo-Prog.
It's a personal thing, but I always interpret genre assignments literally, and "Neo-Prog" is literally what came after Progressive Rock - it's not the same and does not have the same intentions or aspirations, necessarily, as it's from a different era.
Marillion's first album can really suffer, if drums are important to you, but I think it'd still be a fantastic album if someone just sat there slapping their knees in time:
The contrapuntal work is almost unprecedented in rock music - sure it's simple lines, when compared to complex jazz-rock, but that's kinda the point. It's all to do with how the lines work together - very few "Classic" Prog bands managed it - they may have had independent parts working together to produce an amazing and coherent whole, but I can't think of many that made each independent part a strong melody in its own right.
That method of composition is almost unparalleled - and Marillion still do it, to a lesser extent, and the similarities between Marillion's debut and Classic Prog are few and far between - not to mention mostly urban myths (like the comparison between Fish and Gabriel).
Ian Moseley, while compentent, didn't do anything particularly exciting on Fugazi either - but the lights and shades are amazing - I'd hardly call the production slick, although it is (unavoidably) somewhat 1980s, just as Classic prog has a rather 1970s production by default.
Misplaced Childhood is a patchier album, with the odd pop song creeping in amongst somewhat more regressive material.
I couldn't disagree more that the instrumentation lacks dynamic, grittiness or edge on the first 3 Marillion albums - the title track of the first album, for example, starts with an a capella voice, and builds through ripples and then waves to the searing guitar solo.
IQ are a different ball game entirely - they started out rooted in the Classic prog sound, although writing original material, it must be pointed out. They have since developed their own sound, and are very different to Marillion - a key feature of Neo-Prog bands is that the stand-out ones have an instantly indentifiable sound (they've progressed!).
I would also count King Crimson's 1980s albums as Neo-Prog - to me, Discipline typifies King Crimson's approach to Neo-Prog, and are a new approch to Progressive Rock within the Neo-Prog timeline.
Twelfth Night's "Fact and Fiction" comes highly recommended - and Genesis' Duke. The latter seems to get a panning around here sometimes, but to me, it's fantastic Neo Prog.
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Bottom Line on Neo-Prog?
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): their sound is obviously rooted in the Peter Gabriel-era (especially albums like Nursery Cryme and Foxtrot) but the drums are very tight and the compositions are less elaborate, to me this sounds as typical elements from neo-prog. The confusing thing is that the neo-prog scene was speerheaded by Marillion but in fact their first album was more Seventies Classic Prog (70-77 Genesis inspired). From their second album Marillion sounded more as the typical neo-prog (like IQ and Pendragon) and from then, in my opinion, you can talk about the typical neo-prog sound. 
