@Pablo
I've been on a coffee kick for a few months now, and decided I wanted to get into espresso (although I have a Mokapot, which makes very good "semi-espresso", I've never made espresso at home).
Did some research into the various machines out there, and found that there are some consumer-grade machines available in the price range you mentioned that do pretty well, however, most folks who are serious coffee nerds tend to mod them.
One of the most popular is the
Gaggia Classic Pro.
A YouTube coffee guy I've enjoyed watching over the last few months is Chattanooga's own Lance Hedrick. He has a couple of videos where he shows how to mod/hack them to really up the quality of the espresso they make.
However, what I've learned is that the cheapest way to get professional-quality espresso at home is with a manual, lever-actuated espresso press. With one of these, you can make espresso that equals or even exceeds the quality of what you can get out of the multi-thousand-dollar professional espresso machine at your local specialty coffee cafe. For around $500-600.
I ended up deciding that the best out of this category of manual espresso presses is the
Flair 58. I told the wife I'd like one for Christmas.
The Flair 58 has a couple of advantages not found on others - it's got electric preheat, which is huge (without this, the brewhead needs to be preheated with boiling water), and uses a 58mm portafilter (the most common size used by professional-grade espresso machines, so most accessories can be used).
Another advantage to a manual press is that there's no maintenance (automatic machines need frequent de-scaling). Nothing to descale on a manual machine.
Of course, it also has no method to steam milk. That's not a factor for me - I drink my espresso straight. I don't want or need to dilute or obscure the flavor of the coffee with milk. The wife does like milk drinks, however, so, I might look into a stand-alone machine to steam/froth milk so I can make lattes and such for her.
Here's a good review on the Flair 58:
