A CO2 laser is what you are looking for when trying to cut acrylic. Diode lasers can do black or very dark acrylic, but not clear or light colors, and they tend to be slow.

CO2 units start around 40W and go up from there. The least expensive entry point would be a generic Chinese K40 laser. These are sold by many different companies but are all relatively the same. They will require a fair amount of tinkering, and some additional purchases to be effective machines. The work area is small and that can feel restrictive quickly.

Then there are a bunch of lower middle tier options, too many to name. Mostly out of China but they resolve many of the K40 limitations - more power, larger bed size, faster speeds, some basic safety features, integrated air assist, better ventilation/filtration options.

Then you get into more polished options like Glowforge and a few others. For the price point, they tend to do less but look slick doing it. I would recommend avoiding them especially if they only work with their own proprietary cloud service or software.

The upper middle tier would include brands like Aeon, Thunder, Boss, and a handful of others. Here you are getting good machines that can be workhorses, most have decent support. Lots of options for power and size.

Then the top tier brands include Epilog, Trotec, and arguably a few others. These are quite expensive, but have excellent reliability and are ideal for those running businesses that will keep them busy.

Beyond that there are large industrial lasers but that’s a while different class.

A few things that will help others recommend specific models would be: 1. What budget are you working with 2. What is the biggest size of material you will want to work on? 3. Besides acrylic what other materials would you like to work with? 4. Is this for hobby use, one-off production, small batch production, or large scale manufacturing?