I think I am finally ready to make the plunge on a new lathe. I bought a cheap HF bench top to get my feet wet and figure out what I wanted to do with a lathe, what I needed to do that, and how that might fit into my shop space. I don't regret my time with the HF cheapie, I think I'd have likely bought the wrong thing if I'd have spent more money in the beginning and it would have been more painful to make the switch now.

I think that the size and feature set of the Nova 1624 II matches my needs pretty well. Line by line it looks like a great match. I think I'll be happy with it for the foreseeable future, but wonder if there are any other models with a very similar form factor and feature set that I ought to be considering. I definitely want floor standing model that doesn't take up much more space. A similar capacity is required, as is variable speed, a similar speed range, reversing, and spindle indexing.

I also wonder about thoughts of the difference between the old and new 1624. At the moment both seem to be available with a $200 difference in price.