Weekly discussion: late-night thoughts that changed my mind [v5]

Been thinking about this for a while and curious what the community thinks. Long-time lurker, first-time poster. Maybe an unpopular opinion but here we go.

For context, I am working with a pretty modest budget so high-end suggestions probably will not land. The trade-offs here are not obvious to me and I keep flip-flopping. I want to write something more comprehensive about this later but starting with a quick post to gather thoughts.

Maybe an unpopular opinion but here we go.