A fund-of-funds will tend to be pretty average by definition,...

A fund-of-funds will tend to be pretty average by definition, surely - and will mostly come down to the allocation between various strategies. I'd say the lower volatility, ability for them to tune the overall market exposure, plus opportunities to buy at a discount would be the main reason to buy this over an ETF. A pretty solid core holding for those reasons as long as you never buy at a premium, but I don't think you can expect sustained above-average performance with so many underlying fund managers. One or two outperformers will be offset by any going through a poor patch.