I was just faced with the same decision, and took a chance on the Vario.
Long term reliability is unproven, who knows. But Baratza has a very good reputation for supporting their stuff, and replacing broken grinders, so I decided to take a chance on it.

And, I really like the usability of the Vario. I had a Major for a while, but its a huge grinder which was eventually kicked out of the kitchen, so I had to find something that had good WAF, which the Vario has.

With the Major, I spend a lot more time cleaning it out when I was done, with the Vario, with no doser, and low grind retention, I hardly clean it at all. The brushes I used for cleaning the Major are mostly unused now. The Vario is not perfect, it is supposed to take a little while to break in, and until it does I am tweaking the times to get the dose I want, and I have some static issues, but overall I am happy with my decision so far. I also probably waste more coffee now, because I have to purge a few grams of coffee when I switch between drip and espresso, but I needed two grinders before, so that is well worth the tradeoff. And if I am switching coffees, and there are just a little bit left in the grinder, I am usually lazy, and just grind and trash it.

Randy