I agree. I love brewday and sadly even the technology we use at the brewery takes a little away from the hands on approach of homebrewing.
With that said I would certainly consider a pico. Not for test batches but to see what different ingredients bring to the game.
Oddly enough, I still homebrewing our test batches. 10.5gal test batches that we scale to 10bbl. Once you learn your system, efficiency, hop utilization, etc it really is fairly linear. Not exact but damn near. Even then if something calls for 46lbs you can get away with using a full sack.
One thing I love to see and tell people... our RIS uses 12lbs if roasted barley. That would last us home brewers 12 years! Or my DIPA uses 8 and a half pounds of Magnum bittering hops... think how long it would take to get through that much!