If you have a chance to actually try any of these, pay particular attention to the hand-held controllers. Each of these is different, and some manufacturers support multiple hand-helds. In general, though, hand-helds are NOT compatable between manufacturers.
It’s the hand-held that you will deal with the most. Make sure you are comfortable with it. Some have rotary dials and some have all pushbuttons. All have a display of some sort, too. And with that said, I’ll tell you that if I’d had the choice when I bought my Lenz-100 system, I would have taken the hand-held from the Lenz-90. As I’ve quickly realized after adding on one of the Lenz-90 controllers, that would have been the wrong thing to do. The all-pushbutton controller from the 100 system is far more capable, and I’ve quickly gotten used to the buttons over the dial for speed control.
You can get a lot of information from this forum, BUT you need to hold the hardware in your hand to see which system feels right to you. The forum is great for the “book learnin’”, but you need some hands on before you buy.
Hands on isn’t watching some LHS salesman show you either. I watched for over an hour as a LHS person show us all the features of three systems. I didn’t learn a thing.
Our club studied, researched, trialed, debated for over a year. We finally decided just to go buy one. If we eventually didn’t like it we would just switch at a later time. It isn’t like these things cost a lot anymore. Our first command control system cost about $1200 and that was back in 1983.
Personally, for home use, I like the Digitrax Zephyr and CVP’s Easy DCC because they have throttle(s) and the programming keypad on a panel. All the “walk around” stuff can be added later if needed. I hate lugging around that master NCE hammer head thing.