Hello 3dman,
I have a Printrbot LC, a PP3DP UP plus, have build a Reprap Mendel and currently I am building a Printrbot Simple with my class.
The Printrbot are great and do produce usable parts, but on all reprap based printers (including makerbot and others) you will need some tinkering until you get the settings right.
So far the UP is the printer that has the most plug-and-play feel to it. One aspect that can not be mentioned enough times is the software. All printers can print down to 0.1mm layer height or even lower, but in the big test Make-Magazine had a while back only the UP printed the Owl model they used as one of their test objects with the small hole in the beak.
Also, as I print very small models, the break-away support structure works best on the UP, especially with their original OEM ABS that's a bit more expensive. The up mini starts at 899 dollars, so it's not as cheap as other entry level printers.

It really depends on what you plan on printing and what you are expecting, as well as how much time you want to spend tinkering. For some, it's a great aspect of the hobby, and no doubt, it's a good thing that you can repair a reprap based device, while other commercial printers can not be repaired (but you can use a UP as reprap if it dies, someone did this a while ago).

If I had to choose one printer for under or around 1000 dollars, it would be either the UP or a reprap kit with three extruders.
But water soluble support material is overrated, the UP shows what is possible with break away support.
Slicer and other reprap software do als support that now for quite some time, but it's difficult to achieve reliable results for all models. Of course tweakable settings are great, but most of the time the UP presets work well and save me a lot of time.
I print a lot of small earrings, and that works well after getting used to the resrtrains and quirks of a 3d printer.
For larger, not so fragile parts, the Printrbot works great. I printed 3d scans, adapters, repair plastic parts... But the time from design to finished part takes longer, and that does not even take in account the long slicing process with my old, old laptop (in fact, the up software runs on a AMD geode 300MHz/128mb ram just fine while on my Atom 1,6 GHz Netbook Slicer and most others can require an hour for complex models!)

Really nea are the resin printers of course for really small models, but those cost 1000-3000 dollars, so this is the reason why I am so curious about this new Peachy printer, it would be good enough for hobby use and really affordable. But overall I think ABS and PLA printing is a bit less of a hassle regarding mess, price and usabiliy, also the plastic parts are great as depending on thickness and material (abs, PLA, nylon) parts will be rigid or flexible.

So it all boils down to your budget, required build size and technical affinity.

Good luck choosing a 3d printer!