If you don't already have experience, join a makerspace or hackerspace. They'll likely have a far more capable and reliable machine than you can get at the entry level. And a community of people who can already tell you "don't bend your arm that way". And handle the maintenance. Ideally they'll have dust collection and some shared tooling that's in good enough shape to get you off the ground.

Once you build some skill, you'll develop a pretty good idea of what you want for your use case and where spending an extra nickel or two makes sense or doesn't.

I'll also note that a huge hurdle for a lot of people is grasping the differences between raster data, vector data, and actual CAD data.

I really enjoy my Shapeoko Pro XXL, but it's on the "upper entry" end of entry level.

I can swear by the Onefinity (personally have the journeyman). Solidly built, all ball screw rails (not inaccurate belt feeds), great customer service, large work area (32’x 48’) and surprisingly affordable.