I own and APQS Millennium and have been full time longarming for nearly 4 years. I belong to several longarm groups where I'm sure every type of machine is owned by at least one member or more. What I can say is that everyone loves and defends their type of machine as great. Just like sewing machines, we all have personal preferences and love what we have.
Best advice I can give you is to TRY out every machine, preferably at a large show where you can go back and forth from machine to machine and compare, remembering what you liked about each one. They are not cheap and most of the time when repairs are needed the owner (that would be you) would be doing them yourself. Don't believe what they tell you about coming to your home and maintaining the machine. You don't want to wait days to have your machine fixed waiting on the repair man. You can't be afraid to open the manual and work on it.
If I were buying a new machine, here are some of the things I would look for:
*overall weight of the machine, how heavy is it to push around on the frame?
*length of the frame, 10-12-14 foot, what do you need?
*stitch length regulator, try it out, how well does it work, does it create a drag on the machine when running?
*thread cutter, do you want one, would you use it, does it cost extra, would you save anything if it didn't have one?
*adding an extended base, how easy is it to snap on and off, you will be using that frequently and want something easy. That is when you are using a ruler.
*what comes with it? templates, rulers, pantos, thread, bobbin winder (stand alone, not the one attached to the machine), hartley fence (worthless), training videos, hands on training, and so on. These things can run hundreds to thousands of dollars to add on your self later. And you will need them!
*does it have hydrolics? great feature and costly, raises the height of the machine which you will want to do to spare you body the pain of standing and bending in the same position for hours.
*financing
Good luck
Mindy