It’s more about the vocabulary and accent, not the level of education and correctness of the speaker. Usually neutral spanish is understood in all the spanish speaking countries of south america and spain, because, well, it’s neutral.

A good example of neutral spanish usage in real life is dubbing. Most of our dubbing is done in Mexico, but the dubbing itself has no mexican specific words, mannerisms, or accent. Al dubbing is done this way, no matter the country, so only one version of the dubbing works for basically everyone.

As a matter of fact, there have been some experiments to challenge this, and use a more localized accent and vocabulary instead, and most went very wrong. The first Incredibles movie was dubbed with a argentinean flavor, español rioplatense. It was hated in Argentina, massive disaster, we pretend it didn’t happen.

Also sometimes, when dubbing, we pick accents of different countries for different characters on purpose. Most of Grim Fandango was dubbed in Spain’s Spanish, and some characters had Mexican and Argentinean accents, and that was relevant for the plot (Argentinean characters are shady people almost everytime). Think of the choice some media does to make someone speak English from England to make it sound more classy or something like that, basically almost every Spanish accent has its own stereotype.

It’s weird, because neutral spanish is the language nobody speaks, because local accents and lingo, but everybody likes to hear because it’s the most understandable.

I say, go for the most neutral vocabulary you can. You will have an accent anyway because it’s not your native language.

It depends on the reason I’m trying to learn the language. Neutral Spanish is a thing, it’s usually well received in most latin american countries. If you learn something too region specific, usually doesn’t.