I never thought I would see soldering snobbery, but if I was going to see it I guess it would have to be on EEVBlog.
You don't need to spend huge bucks for hobby soldering and I think some facts would be more useful than opinions about prestige. Here are my thoughts, I hope they help a bit.
First, I personally wouldn't buy any no-name junk or knockoffs, even though some have gotten them to work pretty well. It's just hit-and-miss and if you aren't experienced, you aren't going to know if your soldering troubles are caused by crap equipment, crap solder or your crap skills.
If you eliminate the first two by buying known quality right off the bat, you may find out that your skills aren't that bad. That's a lesson I learned long ago when I was convinced that I couldn't solder to save my life and I wondered how others did it.
The Hakko is good enough to start out with for quite a while. I highly recommend you use only Hakko tips as I've tried the knock-offs and they suck. The genuine tips are typically $6-7 and have a decent array of types. I would consider the FX-888 types to be the minimum level of station that I would like to work with--good enough for most things, but of course there is better. The two main shortcomings, if you can call them that, are that the power output is 'only' 65W and that the temperature sensor is in the ceramic heater element, not the tip. The iron heats up quickly enough for all but the most impatient, but temp control is not going to be quite as good. IOW, you need to turn up the heat when doing especially large jobs and some things are going to be more difficult without some preheating. That's what $100 gets you.
The next (big) step up in my book is the Pace ADS200. Well-made in the US, 120W power, sensor in the tip and lots of tips at prices so that you can actually afford to buy a few. Very reasonably priced for what it is -- $369 for a bundle with 3 tips.
From there the sky is the limit. For example:
https://paceworldwide.com/prc2000-miniature-microminiature-electronic-repairIf you have nothing or next to nothing now and you don't want to spend big bucks, just get the FX888D (or a good used FX888 if you can find one) and some bevel tips. I think you'll probably be very happy, and if you do want to move up for some reason, you can resell the FX888D quite easily.