Why small purchases I keep coming back to [v5]

Posting this here because the relevant subreddit has gotten too noisy lately. For context, I am working with a pretty modest budget so high-end suggestions probably will not land. Mostly thinking out loud — feel free to push back hard.

Spent the last few weekends digging into this and the deeper I go the more questions I have. The trade-offs here are not obvious to me and I keep flip-flopping. Spent the last few weekends digging into this and the deeper I go the more questions I have.

Posting this here because the relevant subreddit has gotten too noisy lately.