Been doing stovetop and have some control and success...but too many failures and too little precision for me. I was looking at a possible acquisition of the sr700 but an also intrigued by the kaldi at around 300....any thoughts one way or another?

I do not mind spending an hour or so on 600 grams or doing 300grams even an hour...my current process is sort of absurd and messy frankly...

You can't really compare the two... You need to decide if you want the mess of manual drum roasting or the convenience of fly by wire convective automation. Both approaches have their advantages and the most important question is "which one will be used more".

One is a home roaster with few controls (high medium and low for temp and fan is a form of control, but having no bean temp is merely a programming feature, and will be hard to translate to coffee in cup qualities). It is convection, so faster roasts, even roasting, less chance for underdevelopment, etc.

The other is a drum roaster with all the advantages and disadvantages drums bring to the fold. Seems to come with a trier, with a thermometer (perhaps can be replaced with a thermocouple for connection to instrumentation package like artisan or others).

Uses gas for energy like huky (but I assume it is smaller than a huky and less complex).

It is very easy to ruin a drum roasted batch (but I ruined batches on a Gene as well, but I really just over roasted it). There are many more ways to ruins batch on a drum roaster (from scorching to tipping to underdevelopment etc). Whereas convection are really about stopping the roast on time (yes, I am sure there are nuances there).

So figure out just how deep into the rabbit hole do you want to go and then decide on a roaster.