Red or blue, you cannot really go wrong if you have the money. I have used some cheap machines too. My current one is a multiprocess Vulcan that does dual voltage, MIG, TIG (HF start with pedal), stick and spool and the unit comes with default settings for those who do not know how to run one. Just put in the process, gas, and material/thickness and it gets you to a good starting setting.
There is one main reason welders and plasma cutters fail. Duty Cycle. Each welder has a duty cycle rating that most people just ignore (or don't know about). If your machine has a 40% duty cycle at whatever setting you are using, that means after 4 minutes of welding, you must let the machine circuitry cool for 6 minutes before continuing. I've always seen duty cycle examples in manuals given based on a 10 minute period but always tried keeping the duty cycle to a minute period or so. Just be generous with the cooling periods! The only two complaints on youtube for my Vulcan are 1-the MIG gun can melt and 2-the display can fail. The gun melting is because the machine can do 200A and the stock gun is rated for 180A. If you crank it up to 200A, ignore the duty cycle, and hit some 1/2" steel without reading the box, yea, it will melt the MIG gun lol. The display failures I think were related to a bad power switch arcing, and I think they fixed that issue. My switch doesn't arc when powering on so who knows...
Even name brands can fail. My brother had a $1200 27A Hobart plasma cutter, used maybe 4 times, and when he disconnected the air hose to put the machine away, the circuit board exploded. It hadn't ran for hours so it wasn't hot... On the flip side, those $600 40A Chicago plasma cutters seem to be quite good for the price for the little I've used one. Some welding nuts will tell you that you NEED to go "red or blue", but if you are not doing production level stuff, the cheap ones will do just fine if you mind the duty cycles!