3D printer.
What is the sweet spot between price and quality at the lower end of the market?
It sort of depends on your comfort level with searching for answers vs how much you want plug and play.
First thing I would say though is have a purpose in mind for it before you even start looking. For one this plays a part in the type, but also if you have no idea what you want to do with it it's just going to sit. It's a tool, a very slow tool and while it's amazing to watch something you designed on a computer rise out of nothing to a physical thing, it's a lot of time and money to invest if you have no use for it. You don't buy a laser level unless you need it.
If you want to do small stuff like earrings, rings, bracelets for your kids or wife (my mom loves the earrings), chess pieces, Warhammer stuff, a resin printer may be a good choice. Beware, these are not good in a house (messy and toxic) and they are really only good for small stuff. The good side is these are fast and have amazing detail. These are relatively new to the lower price point and I don't really recommend them as your only printer, but your use case may warrant it.
When most people think 3d printing they think FDM, where you use a spool of plastic, these can do highly detailed stuff, and when tuned pretty close to a resin printer but can also do larger objects. These can be used in a house when using certain plastics, though I developed an allergy to it so mine is in a closet with a smoke detector, camera and HEPA filter.
If you want easy peasy, look for an Prusa, not a clone, the real ones. They are often backlogged and run $800, but they are pretty much the printer for ease of use and quality. If you want larger or cheaper, Creality Ender Pro or Tronxy CoreXy models. The Ender will be around $200, the Tronxy falls in the middle, the latter being larger and often faster, both have less factory support (Chinese) compared to the Prusa which pretty much has the best support and documentation of almost any company I've seen and not just in 3d printing. All 3 have large online support communities so help is there regardless. Don't forget, even the best ones are a hobby in themselves, even the best professional ones that cost tens of thousands require effort to maintain (same as a cnc mill) and there is always something to learn so you WILL be needing help.
Don't forget you also need to learn CAD to get the most from it which is another hobby in itself.
By the way, don't be afraid to buy used if you are willing to work to save some money, just research it first. It needs to work, have standard parts (nema 17 motors!) and you don't want to buy a fire hazard. So long as it meets this criteria even old printers can be beefed up to modern standards which haven't really changed much at the low to mid range in years and you can always use it to make an even better open source model and use it's parts. Open source dominates home 3d printers, with them being some of the best ones you can buy/build at any price.
If you have access to one you may even want to consider broken ones, I've literally seen them given away by people who bought something better and just didn't want to deal with it anymore, but you often need access to one to make parts. Many people end up with more than one just so they can make parts when things break on the other.
