For medium/dark roast you don’t need to preheat. You pour hot water directly into the deep basket, which has very little thermal mass so the temperature won’t drop much. The basket sits in the portafilter with a handle so your hands are safely away from the heat. Much of the heat loss is to the piston but due to the short contact time (~30s) it’s not much of an issue.

For light roast you do want to pre-heat the piston…and you’d need to be creative for that (I’ve seen some people use candles…). This is when you’d want a Flair 58 with the electronic temperature control.

I have the signature model and it makes good espresso.

That said, pre-heating the brew chamber (you’ll also need to pre-heat the portafilter for the pro model) can be quite a pain, and you can’t really skip it cuz otherwise water won’t be hot enough when pulling the shots and you get sour coffee. Juggling the hot chamber is also not a fun thing especially if it’s your first coffee in the day (though it will wake you up way faster than coffee if you messed up :p)

I’ve since switched to the cafelat robot and the workflow is so much better.

edit: spelling