Underrated gear recommendations worth the hype? [v3]

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

I want to write something more comprehensive about this later but starting with a quick post to gather thoughts. Spent the last few weekends digging into this and the deeper I go the more questions I have. There is a lot of conflicting advice online and most of it is from 2019.

Looking for honest feedback, not validation. For context, I am working with a pretty modest budget so high-end suggestions probably will not land. Not sure if this is the right place to ask, mods please remove if it is not.