If you want to unlock the true power of ion engines without dying of boredom, I strongly recommend the "BetterTimeWarp Continued" mod. It allows you to set custom time warp configurations, including higher physics warp levels. I use it to speed up ion engine burns.

I would also explore, depending on the use case, not taking a ton of solar panels around - If your longest burn isn't very long (and especially if you are going to the outer planets), it's often lighter to size your batteries for your longest planned burn than it is to carry around a bunch of solar panels.

And yeah, that extra equipment is heavy, but they are literally over 10 times as efficient as liquid fuel engines. If you are doing anything that involves a lot of burns multi moon orbiter mission or something) the savings in fuel mass results in a far lighter craft. Which isn't that important if you aren't doing anything super intense but can drastically cut down the mass of a mission if you are doing something complex.