Hello RB. I bought the least expensive printer that was available around last year. It is a Tronxy kit from Gearbest that was only ~$180 shipped. One thing I wish it had was a proximity sensor for assisting with bed leveling. There are people with much more hardware experience than me here though, so hopefully you'll get some more input.

Fortunately, there are a lot of options for 3D modeling software out there. FreeCAD and Openscad are free and both are available for Mac. Fusion 360 and Onshape are other options that are free, but with catches. Fusion 360 is free if you make less than $100k a year using it. Onshape has a free plan, but your designs can't be kept private under that plan. If you're used to Solidworks, Onshape may be a good place to start. It looks and feels very close to SW, since it was started by former SW employees.

I've never actually connected my printer to my computer and just run it off of a SD card, so I don't know about connectivity problems.

Good luck,

Matt