Congratulations on your new found obsession and success. What you’ve done took me MONTHS to accomplish.
I could care less about the topic. Too many people are thin skinned and go around looking to be offended, especially when they sell products with latches that release.
The Whip would not be a good step up. The Whip is inexpensive, durable, fun, a good grinder, but way too light. Think of it is as step up if you’re not sure if you want to continue yet, or as a light weight option to challenge yourself later on. The weight prevents you from having great spin times, restricting you to GOOD spin times only. The ONE has many of the same issues but with 2 bearings, it can go from responsive to unresponsive play, but the surface isn’t good for grinding.
There are plenty of under $20 options. The Adegle PSG and/or Asteroid are relatively new but are highly recommended, and I do agree. The YYF Starbrite is also a solid performer for the money, as is the stackless grind machine. YYJ offers the Speed Maker and Kickside, which use a hybrid response(starburst one side, rubber o-ring on the other). If you clean out the bearing, these become amazing. You can also yank the o-ring and silicone it and it becomes even better. The Lyn Fury uses 2 of these rubber o-rings for a response, so clean the bearing and silicone the space where the rings where and this is a serious player! You need to learn how to do maintenance anyways, so knowing how to clean a bearing a silicone a yoyo are skills you’re gonna learn anyways.
Step up to the under $30 range, there’s the Grind Machine(with stacks), Starlight, and DieNasty by YYF, just to name a few. YYJ offers the Chaser and Legacy II, which both come with a pre-installed thin bearing and a YYJ Speed Bearing in the package for easy swap-out to unresponsive play.
The next jump up in price is the $35 Northstar or Protostar. Amazing plastics that routinely compete with $100 metals. Preferences play a bit role here as the shapes are the same but the weights are different.
If you’re really into this, the Dark Magic II is a highly recommended yoyo, and again, with the 2 bearings, goes quickly from responsive to unresponsive.
Whatever you get, you need to practice, a lot. More is better.