Galileo and Copernicus and Brahe would have coveted today's flea market class telescopes. It's been diminishing returns for a long time, today's most terrible optics are really damn good. Most of the differences among what a beginner buys will be what sits in their closet collecting dust.
It's a fascinating hobby for people fascinated by it. Most people won't be fascinated enough to turn it into one. The idea of shopping for gear is typically more than the idea of using it. That's why this page is a shopping question not a use question. Shopping is easier.
Of course, optics are only half the battle. The other half is with the hardware all around them: plastic tripod leg clamps that slide, plastic baseplates that crack behind collimation screws, alt-az mounts that shake like a branch when you try to slew, and everything in-between.
I think you have the right mentality about making sure you enjoy the hobby and what to understand how to use a scope, but maybe the better advice (modulo COVID precautions) is to seek out star parties or observatory public outreach events. These are free, aren't fraught with the pitfalls of cheesy equipment, and will show you as much as you can expect to see with a scope given several years of experience and several thousand dollars of investment. Was it inspiring or disappointing? Would you drive an hour out of your way to stuff your hands in your pockets and do it again?
I understand what you mean. And I could attribute my disinterest in telescope sky gazing to exactly those factors...I’ve had two of them cheap wobbly things over the years.
But I know that’s not really it.
It’s that though it was cool to see the moon and planets and such, it didn’t make me want to solve telescopic problems in the dark.
Better equipment doesn’t change the types of telescope problems that need to be solved in the dark. It just changes the grain. The mount and optics will always be nothing but compromises. The weather will never be controlled. Light pollution will be there. Objects will rise and fall on their own schedule.
For me, those are mildly interesting. Not interesting enough to pursue ever more difficult problems. To find ever more rarely seen astronomical objects.
Going out to an event is a good alternative to a movie. But just as going to a movie isn’t a good indication of an interest in solving cinematic problems, looking through someone else’s telescope probably doesn’t indicate much about solving telescope problems ones self.
A cheap telescope is the simplest thing that might work. It is the most direct path past “maybe.” It is the least guilt option for a telescope sitting in the closet. And it is the easiest excuse for being bad...which all beginners are.
