Let;s not talk about toys here, they are something different, items for zen people who dont care about espresso related things, but maybe about aspect, experience while pulling a shot, material colours and such, the silence of no noise when pulling a shot. All those things are +++ but they are not related to the result in the cup.
Everyone buys what they want, and prices their product how they want, and people value things differently. I have friends who would not buy the Vesuvius evo leva just because of it's size and weight, not because of it's price or features.
"The temperature on the Strietman brew-group fluctuates within a 3ºC differential, so your ideal brew-temperature will never be more than -1.5c/+1.5 off.".
Related to machines, if you want to get the best value, La peppina has a 1C off-set from boiler temp to group temp (with scace) and if you pid it you can get the water to the desired temp within 0.5C degrees. It heats in 6 mins, and you can always dump the water out after each session if you want. The problem with it, are the materials.
In my opinion manual levers are nice to explore, but they dont give you consistency, or will never do things better than a spring machine. My friend who has the Pavoni pimped and using it for more than 6 years already, got a Peppina last year, he was pulling better shots after just 3 days, with an average extraction of 24% while on the same coffee he was at 22% on Pavoni.