Over the years I've done several floor installations for family and friends without this tool (or known of its existence) and can say with confidence that it's not a necessity, but a relatively small one The investment is absolutely justified (especially if you are laying more than 100 sqm of flooring or plan to do so in the future)! If you're just trying to quickly install an LVP in a laundry room or something small, you can grab your mini event and some scrap wood and you can be done before it arrives with Day 2 Prime shipping. but other than that it's a really excellent and reliable tool that works exactly as intended (and so far at least a dozen other apps that I've found useful for my shop and which were probably not OEM in the marketing team's mind)!