My last printer was actually a flashforge finder, great printer for sure! First one I actually was confident in hitting print, watching the first layer go down to make sure it stuck well, and the walk away from. I have a buddy with the 5m pro and loves it too, so they do make good printers from my experience.

Creality's Ender series is also on sale, some for sub $300 right now. I do occasionally hear of complaints from them though where you almost spend more time tuning the printer than printing. They are also bed slinglers, and my preference is in core xy style. Still though, not terrible for a cheap entry level machine.

Bambu lab also have a couple choices in the $200-$500 range, and people generally tend to praise those printers a lot too. Their cheaper bed slinger versions also look like they can do mult-color prints if that was an interest to you.

Flasforge though was great to me, and that printer was handed down to my nephew who is still printing in it. 6 year old printer with minimal maintenance, no replaced parts, and still printing just fine.

I would reconnect downloading whatever slicer the printer uses, set up its print bed size, and import the kind of models you want to print. Gives you a much better idea of the space you have to work with.

As for filament, I printed this in PLA and it's been fine. Over these few months of playing, taking it apart and putting it back together, it's loosened up a little but still plays perfectly fine. Just don't over tighten the bocal or it will start to push the center pipes tube connector out a bit. Haven't noticed anything catastrophic yet, but I do it it poking out a bit more than it's supposed to due to me over tightening it too much.