I think it's fine if one were to stick with a limited budget to try out first.
Test if coffee making is what you enjoy doing.
If it's something you find pleasure in doing, you will eventually upgrade to a better machine.
As you use it, you will start to recognise what are the short comings better and know what to look for next.
If you don't enjoy making, at least you are not losing much.
However if you are someone who had been faithfully drinking coffee for a long time, wish to entice your family and kids to enjoy the ritual of making coffee with you. Want to keep your family's drinking habit cleaner.
Then i think it's worth investing for a good machine straight, there's many things that will benefit beside speed. There's better thermal stability to properly groom out majority of the profiles in your coffee, temperature and stable pressure do play a big part.
Commercial standard machines are much more durable, and are a lot easier to make a good shot, meaning lesser wasted shots.
You can do some light maintenance, maybe a repair once in a few years and keep the machine running for life. <There are people who collect antique espresso machines and they are still working>
For a home machine, having a machine that is easy to use for all is also an important factor to consider. Sometimes, just because it's slower by a few minutes, or an extra one or two steps, can keep people from using.
Like what some others are saying, you will need a good enough espresso grinders because you can still use your grinder and adopt to better machines in future.
But it's not really necessary to pay exorbitant amount for it because grinders are dumb machines and only does one thing, grind. But decent ones are probably still above the $400 mark unless you pick hand wound grinders which are more tedious and time consuming to use.
Whatever grinder you purchase, the user will still have to calibrate the grinder to work with the coffee and the machine.
Whatever it is, if you are stepping out to enjoy coffee, whether you are a hipster or not, i think it's good.
