Quoted from Astropin:The lighting alone is worth $1700?.....that's priceless right there.
No of course not. None of the extra features are "worth it". But I love my LE and regret not a dime I spent on it. But you can't really quantify it, and really very few pinballs are "worth it" when you actually think about what we spend on them.
I really love the lighting, it's really awesome and adds to the mood of the pin a lot. In subtle ways (like Fade to Black CIU) or the little touches like being one shot away from cross multiball and the lighting goes blue. The RGB spider inserts make it much clearer what to shoot for. I wouldn't give it up.
Only thing I don't totally love is the hammer, though I'm pretty used to it. But the mod I'm doing for that is really fixing the issue, looking forward to finishing it up and playing with it every day.
But the Pro is a great value. You get plenty of awesome game without the extra features. No one should ever feel bad for buying a Pro. It's ridiculous that anyone would look down on that.