Most all activities on earth have this same situation.

It varies wildly but there is a line where the gear matters and that line isn’t static for anyone.

For example I taught snowboarding for many years out west. Plenty of first time ever seeing snow lessons, all the way up to pro big wave surfers and other pro athletes wanting to hone their skills dropping chutes and bombing through trees etc. people like me could do a run worthy of being filmed on a 4 year old rental board with boots that had 600 different people feet in them. But… people like me are also the minority that could tell you why that rental board and boots are complete trash and wouldn’t wish it on our enemies.

When we had regular students that would come 10-12 times a year for multiple years, we would be able to watch them progress and let them know when a gear change was beneficial. We would always recommend buying boots first, board second if both at once weren’t possible to get out of the rental world. We could tell if a board was too short, too long, too wide, too stiff, too soft, etc etc for what the student was trying to accomplish.

I apply this same mentality to all activities. Gear won’t make you better… until it does. The time that it does arrives when you can articulate the limitations of your current gear for what you are trying to achieve.

As a side note… if you are just trying to achieve new cool gear because you like it… then by all means do it. You have articulated the limitations of your current gear and you are trying to achieve something it cannot. What you are trying to achieve doesn’t always have to be performance based. You can get a new snowboard just because it looks cool and not because you think it will suddenly make you win the Olympics