Best pros and cons [v5]

Maybe an unpopular opinion but here we go. There is a lot of conflicting advice online and most of it is from 2019.

I tried three different approaches and none of them felt quite right. 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.

Been thinking about this for a while and curious what the community thinks. Posting this here because the relevant subreddit has gotten too noisy lately. Spent the last few weekends digging into this and the deeper I go the more questions I have.