If this philosophy is holding you back, then don't plan to buy any kind of utility device ever, because everything has the same issue. Just decide what features you want now and buy it to try out.
I'd think of it this way. If you're really dubious if its something teh family needs or will use much of, or whether you'll need a bigger bed etc.... just get the basic $200 A1 mini. Hell I read a thread yesterday a guy got a $25 coupon from Microcenter, then used his Rewards account for 10% off and bought one for $155. This isn't a lot of money. [USER=519]@Ron[/USER] or [USER=7416]@UTfball68[/USER] would spend more on a bottle of booze and get less time out of it.
What features are you worried about? That unit already covers all the typical "upgrades", you get auto bed leveling, auto spaghetti detection, it goes 3x the speed of anything else, webcam, phone integration, cloud integration.
The only features you might want would be multiple materials in a single print (which is super rare and very few people actually need), a bigger bed (and note, the mini is the size many printers were for many years), or an enclosure so you can print exotic materials (yet you can make 90% of things aroung the house w/ PETG variants).
Just get the cheap one now and in a year, get another one and donate that one to your favorite charity. The tax writee on the "value" based on the OE price would be nearly 100 bucks.
