Lightsabers

The blade is the decision. Everything else follows it.

Baselit or pixel

A baselit hilt puts the light source in the emitter and sends it up a hollow polycarbonate tube. There are no electronics in the part of the saber that meets another blade, which is why it takes hard contact and a fair part of why the same hilt costs less built that way. A pixel hilt moves the light into the blade itself, as a strip of individually addressable lights — that is what buys the brightness and the behaviour, a deflection that travels up the blade rather than flashing the whole of it, and it is the same strip that sets the limit on how hard it can be struck.

How much of it do you want to set yourself

That is the whole of the Saber Core question. A baselit core gives you a fixed set of colours and a bank of sounds, both chosen from the hilt and neither of which grows after you own it. A neopixel core makes colour anything, adds behaviour a lit tube cannot have, and drives from an app. Proffie 2.2 is the only core in the catalogue whose firmware opens: blade styles, effects and sound fonts become files you edit rather than presets you pick. It is not a bigger tier, it is a more open one.

Buying your first one

If the saber is going to meet another blade regularly, buy from the duelling grade and buy the heaviest you can. If it is going to be carried, photographed and swung without being struck, a pixel blade gives you far more for the same money. Plenty of people end up owning one of each, and for a first and second saber that is usually the honest answer.