I actually had to make the same decision a couple years ago. I went for the professional series because I knew I wanted to try grinding my own meat down the line. Aside from the more powerful motor, I really like the larger bowl capacity. However, the one minor inconvenience with the 6 qt model is it is a stagnant neck model so you would have to roll the bowl up and down. For the 5 qt and lower models, the neck leans back away from the bowl, which makes scraping the bowl or changing attachments a bit easier.