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There's no good third-level alternative to Magic Armor if you need your hands for something other than a stave. My archery Wizard has nothing to pick- there isn't even an out of combat stave he can use. Second-level items are very limited, and I think first is just consumables.
My goodness is it unbelievably frustrating to have to hunt through alphabetized items with mixed consumables and permanent items of all levels. It's a miserable experience, up there with hunting for PF1 items on a high-level character, and this is only 4th level.
I ended up with a scroll of a spell I can already cast, an item that lets me cast a weaker version of a spell I have prepared, bracers of armor, and a healing potion. I'm not going to be touching my resonance, because I couldn't find an item that used it for anything I wanted.
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The sweet source of 2nd-level items is not on page 349 for the 2nd-level Treasure table; instead, it is on page 190, with the expert-quality mundane items. A paragraph there says that they are 2nd-level items. Expert-quality heavy armor is 3rd level for some unexplained reason. Some of the expert-quality prices can be found in Table 6-12: Adventuring Gear on page 185, but other prices are nowhere to be seen. Maybe a lot of items don't come in expert quality.
For selecting the one 3rd-level item, two 2nd-level items, and one 1st-level item for a newly created 4th-level character, prices don't matter. But then my players had a problem with their 300 sp of cash for buying additional items. They could not afford permanent magic items, they wanted better than 0th-level mundane items, but they could not buy 2nd-level expert-quality items without a price.
My wife's barbarian wanted to carry more stuff, so she wanted an expert-quality backpack, the equivalent of PF1's masterwork backpack. No such item is listed. I made up a price and said it let her carry one more bulk.
The 2nd-level wands and potions feel useless due to the restricted resonance at 4th level. Why buy a fourth potion when you suspect you might not have the resonance to drink it? My players applied that logic to the third potion, too, though they ought to have the resonance for that.