Thank you for your responses Martin.
A few days ago I ordered a ConBee II to see the difference with HUSBZB-1.
Oh my… in less than 1 hour I had managed to get deCONZ and the HA Integration set up, along with my IKEA on/off button, to toggle a group of 2 TP-Link Kasa wall switches. In comparison to ZHA, the user experience is stellar.
I think once these zha-device-handlers make into Hass.io, the ZHA experience might be the exact same for both of these ZigBee gateways. I’ll try again. But for now ConBee+deCONZ all the way!