I think lots of this boils down to choices made for either precision or for speed (or convenience), with cost lurking in the background.
The other day I saw a post elsewhere talking about a new annealing machine that was digitally controlled and costs around $700, IIRC. I know darned good and well that a few probably went to the website and bought one right away because having "the best is always the way to go." But, really? I've shopped for hammers before, and they are really simple devices that will last forever if they're made even just half-assed and do the job they were meant to do well. Fifteen bucks oughta do it, but I'll bet I could shop around and find one that costs fifty or sixty bucks, or maybe even a gold plated hammer costing much more. And it would not drive nails any better than a fifteen-dollar hammer. I don't see an annealing machine as being much different from a hammer because the task is so simple. All the machine does is apply a flame to a case neck for some duration, and hopefully runs the cases through the process automatically...and that can be done for a lot less than $700. I paid around $300 for an Annealeez because I liked the fact that I could load it up with fifty .223 cases and just watch it run, and I didn't have to scrounge a bunch of parts and fiddle with assembling it for several evenings. If the Annealeez holds one in the flame for a 2/10 of a second longer now and then, I cannot imagine any real difference in the ultimate outcome---even if making ammo for a top grade benchrest rifle. On the other hand, I see annealing cases without an annealing machine of some kind a lot like pounding nails with a rock. You can do it, but it's just no damned fun at all.
Where precision is mandatory, I think it's a different story. It just depends on how much precision is needed and where the point of diminishing returns happens to be...but paying more does not always get you more.
