Many of the filtering options using filtering elements requires the use of code. That example has the code needed on the page.
There’s another example with more filtering options as well. https://www.wix.com/velo/example/multiple-filter-methods
If you’ll be using the examples, this article may help and there is always the Velo forum as well for more technical questions. We have two webinars about using Velo as well.
However, as you mentioned without the use of code, I believe dropdowns would be the only way currently to filter by user input as the others are currently feature requests.
https://support.wix.com/en/article/request-filtering-collection-content-from-a-selection-of-user-input-elements