OK.... Seriously:
In this price range , all the machines are going to be fairly close. Many will share some of the same components like pressurestats, control boxes, and pumps.
My primary concern would be to find one that makes the best possible espresso. This does not necessarily mean one that has a PID or has two gages instead of one, and so on. Espresso quality comes from the way the water is delivered to the coffee (dispersion pattern as well as flow rate), temperature stability and repeatability. Just because the pipes of a machine are insulated means nothing. A good machine with uninsulated pipes could mean that it was designed that way to work best. A machine with an insulated boiler could mean that it was designed in a way that it had so much heat loss that its heating element could not keep up. I am not commenting on any specific design feature nor machine nor manufacturer, but stating that simply looking at features or design does not mean good coffee.
If you have locked yourself in a price range and have no flexibility, make a list of the machines in that range that acceptable to you. Do a spreadsheet of features in the order of importance to you and give them a point score. Then go to
http://www.coffeegeek.com and look at the user reviews. Specifically look at the negative comments only as to what people did not like about the machines. Do the same list and subtract those points from the totals.
I hesitate to recommend my machine to you because it is out of your price range as well as being the only HX machine I have ever used, so my opinion is compared against nothing. But I will offer this- the previous machine I used for 6½ years was Silvia and Rocky. Silvia was PID'd for a good three or four years. My current HX machine makes better coffee all the time than the Silvia, and I have only had it for about two months- same water, same coffee, same grinder, and consistently better coffee. So I would say that whatever you get, you will be ahead of the game. Be wary of similar reports (and mine as well). I would offer that few home baristas have ever had REALLY excellent espresso. They may be making better espresso in the home than they ever had tasted, but all the espresso they have ever tasted may have been sludge.
I do my own service work on my machines, and I tend to keep things around for quite some time (still have the motorcycle I bought in 1981 and still have the wife I boug... errr... married in 1971). I try to buy things that are dependable and easy to service. That may not be important to you. The point is that just because someone else has a machine they love and recommend to you does not mean it will be the same for you.
The best source of information is probably here on HB because of the hard data available. The recent graphs showing temperature stability of the Vibiemme Domobar as well as the graphs Eric posted of the Silvia are good examples.
Don't get me wrong-- I already have a long list of things that could have been done better with my Vibiemme.
Take all that, then ignore it, and get the machine YOU want....
