[mercer]

Quite possibly, and it's always a good exercise (and in this case justifiable) to do it the 'vanilla way'.

That said, even for relatively simple, non-input type projects I've found that Redux is worth it. I got thoroughly sick of passing props down multiple levels.

Furthermore, I found that I often ended up making mistakes where my components were too reliant on their context (even when considering variable/prop naming). Redux, I feel, extends the 'pit of success' effect that React has; when I use it I'm more likely to properly isolate components.