I’d still say Citadel’s contrast paint has a slight edge over Army Painter, even their 2.0 formulation. That said, I actually don’t know if I’d say I would recommend Citadel’s contrast instead of AP2.0 for newcomers, for a couple of big reasons:

1. Cost - Army Painter is about half the cost. That means twice the amount of paint for the same price, and that means more colours to choose from. For a lot of beginners, the quality of the paint isn’t the limiting factor, it’s the colour choices. You quickly realize that if you want to paint a variety of different minis, you need a variety of colours, and that adds up pretty fast if you stick with just Citadel.

2. Settling - Contrast is notoriously quick to settle on the bottom of the pot. With some colours it’s bad enough that I have to use a stick to stir up the bottom of the pot. If you’re painting infrequently as a newcomer, you’ll likely experience this every time you paint. No matter what paint you use, you should probably shake your paints, but in the case of Citadel contrast paints, sometimes it’s multiple minutes and still no homogenization. Blender balls help, but those are yet another cost barrier to entry, as Army Painter includes those for free inside their paints.

3. Flow - For experienced painters, the flow properties of Citadel contrast is nice, as it allows for wet blending. It’s a criticism of AP2.0 that they dry relatively quickly. For newcomers who won’t be doing wet blending, this is a benefit you pay for with Citadel’s higher price, but don’t get to take advantage of. Like buying the highest end graphics card just to play Minecraft, for instance.

4. Pot vs Dropper - This is a subjective thing, but having used both pots like Citadel’s, and droppers like Army Painters (for use with palettes), I find the latter to be much easier to use. Citadel pots sometimes don’t stay open, close while you’re using the paint, and because their “paint lip” can only hold a small amount of paint, you have to refill the lip frequently or dip directly into the pot. You can pour paint out onto a palette, but there is a reason the “spilling nuln oil all over your desk is a right of passage” meme is a thing.

5. Consistency - Citadel contrast colours vary tremendously in their flow properties. Some colours are very watery and thin, and flow like water, and others are thick and viscous and dry slowly. Some contrast significantly into a kind of hue gradient, others contrast straight to black, others contrast barely at all. It’s a learning curve for sure, but Army Painter’s speed paints are generally all more consistent with one another and have a much more consistent result. The skill ceiling is lower, and the effects you can get are much less pronounced, and thus AP2.0 paints do tend to give a certain “look” that you can’t change much, but as a beginner, this is probably preferable.

As for the painting handles, YMMV. I own one, but as other hobbyists will tell you, the handle does restrict the base, which you do usually paint. It’s also kind of expensive. Personally, while I have one, I end up sticking to just grabbing a dowel from the hobby store, or any other handle shaped thing, and sticking a bit of blue tack (sticky tack, teacher’s tack) on the end and plop the mini that way. You could also use a metal rod and put magnets on the base of your minis as is common, but that’s a bit of a higher barrier to entry.

Really, I think your best bet is to buy a basic D&D set of minis, as they’re accessible and cheap, and you usually get two or three, and then buy a few individual colours from either company to test how you individually like them. You can always use both, for example, and I find that I still really like to use Citadel’s “Skeleton Horde” for all my skeletons, but use AP2.0 for most other things.

Just make sure if you do test out individual paints, that you’re getting the AP2.0 formulation specifically, as I’m not sure how widely available the new version is.