IO540 and I have crossed swords about the whizz-wheel many times on Pprune, and I freely admit to being a fan of it, whilst he clearly isn't.
However, in this case I'm going to come out being a little on the anti side. There is no rule requiring you to use the device, and there are other manual ways to calculate drift and groundspeed.
Using something like an fx83 and doing trig calculations is only using an electronic calculator instead of the analogue calculator which is the whizz-wheel and perfectly legitimate most of the time.
Very rarely is there any good reason to use the device in flight, as IO540 rightly says. You have other things to worry about and plenty of methods to mentally correct for corrections and diversions.
In one of my CPL exams I recall a nasty calculation that gave me results on the question paper within a tiny margin of each other and I just wasn't getting a consistent answer from my Aviat 617 (ultra posh version of the CRP-1); I eventually used my ruler and protractor to mark out the vectors on a chart and measured the answer. This is also, as it happens, how the old PPL(M) nav used to be taught, although I'm unsure if that's still the case with the NPPL?
That said, if, say, you plan to go commercial or instructor you will almost certainly need to master it and it is a useful tool so I'd recommend persevering in learning how to use it. But it's not vital at PPL level.
G