My filter arrived, but i am a bit concerned about quality.
Is this normal? I thought the "burnt" area could be a weld of the mesh, but it seems a bit strange and protuding.
Anyone had experience with this filter?

I would agree with your assumption that it's where the mesh was secured.

It is where the mesh is secure.

FWIW, I wouldn't bother with this. You can get an OEM filter with the oring for $35 from Kozmic and replace as needed. Stainless filters can wear and reduce their filtering ability over time. And cleaning them ****ing sucks.

I had one in my SST. Lasted fine over 120,000mi. Changed the fluid 3 times, each time the filter ran black when I soaked/cleaned it (it cleaned a lot better with an overnight soak than it did just trying to spray it out) but I'm not convinced it did as good a job as the OEM filter based on how BLACK the first one was at 30k mi.
And yeah, when I first got the car the filter was over $50 from Mitsubishi and hard to get.

I have 48k miles and i plan to do an SST oil change every year. It's not a daily driver so i will do around 6k miles a year.

I bought this product because here in Europe it's really difficult to find parts for the Evo X at a good price.

I will keep all you guys updated with pics and mileage of the filter so if someone will plan on buying it, he can have some infos.

I mounted an external oil filter housing next to the factory oil filter location and removed the factory sst filter all together. After some research I run this filter now:
Filter

I can replace it every other oil change for cheap and it filters to 20 microns at 99 percent. 94% at 10 microns .. massive holding capacity...