I consider it unfortunate, I never said you do. I love sips. They save my grow and I've had zero problems with them. I'm gone a lot. Drying out too fast is a problem I face when gone. It depends on how you grow. In an organic living soil, completely drying out is a bad thing. I use lava rock, perlite, and grow stones and go well above 1/3 of my base medium, more like 40% or better. You weren't talking about hydroton in the post I quoted, nor was I saying that's the only way. That's why I said not exactly. It depends in how you grow
I love smart pots. I use FF soil and perlite. I like how fast it dries out, I've heard it's good for the plants to dry/water often but I don't know if there's any science to back that up. I use one of these to prop it up so it doesn't sit in runoff water. The roots will grow right through into any water they touch.
I used to grow with ff and did the whole wet>>>> dry cycle. It was always a pain when I was gone for a week or so. I would come home to severely thirsty plants. Once I read about organic soils in sips I knew it was for me. It maintains a nice even very slightly damp medium that doesn't damage the micro herd we spend money and time developing. As opposed to wet>dry>wet>dry, which does.