The most important point is the individuals coffee skills. Forget baskets, tampers, distributors and all the rest…..they just tweak……If you think of a coffee machine as an oven, then you might have the most expensive oven in the world, but if you put in the cheapest steak you can find, once cooked it does not come out as fillet. Only a few people have really sensitive tastebuds. Of course a lot of folk can detect subteleties and that is what all these expensive tools do.
If you lined up 6 × 58 mm machines in a blind taste test, no one would be able to identify them. If then throw in a lever you will detect changes. If you then drop in a 54mm group you will detect changes.
Going back to the oven analogy, the grinder for me is more important than the machine. All the must have accessories the influencers push are just income generators resulting in folks posting shot prep videos where they go to extraordinary lengths, but give us all a chuckle!
I cannot find the original video now, but this is a re-post of an influencer getting just deserts…..I found it very funny