Glad I could help. I am in a similar quandary as yourself as I need to upgrade out of my old bandsaw. I was originally looking at the entry level Jet or Grizzly as I had determined (with much guidance) those were the absolute bare minimum you had to spend to get a solid machine (unless of course you pick up a Craftsman 12 or something on craigslist). But then I determined that I use a bandsaw so much and it is such a versatile machine that I could justify spending a few hundred dollars more to get something much better, around your budget of about $1200. Which is where I'm at now between a Rikon or Laguna. So 800+ will get you something serviceable but for 1000-1200 you get a solid frame, a much larger table, a more powerful motor, better parts, better construction, built in resaw height, a more heavy duty tensioner, etc, etc. I feel like the Rikon 10-324tg is the sweet spot right now for price-performance at around $950 unless you plan on doing a lot of heavy resawing. Though with the way things are going with availability you could make a compelling argument for the 10-326 which is probably were I'll end up at anyways as it seems they are "easier" to get a hold of nowadays?
Take online reviews with a grain of salt, most people making reviews are nuts and they also abuse their tools. I'm also sort of getting tempted by the Laguna 1412, it's in the same tier as the Rikon 10-326 but it's a hundred bucks less and appears to be similar or better in every category. The Laguna uses ceramic blocks for their guides instead of bearings like the Rikon. One of the top reviewers for the Laguna 1412 on youtube gave it a bad review because he claimed the ceramic guides are plated and wear out too quickly. One of the top comments for that video was a guy who explained to him that they were solid ceramic blocks and not plated. That it would cost Laguna more to plate a suitable substrate in ceramic than to just provide solid blocks, and if they were plating them that they would only plate the working surface and not the entire block, and that it was not a wearing down of the ceramic that he was seeing but since ceramic is harder than steel that it was the blade wearing off on the ceramic and not the other way around, and that this was happening because he had the saw set up wrong, and then explained to him how to set it up the right way and some other engineering stuff and the reviewer just started arguing with the man. It was completely incredulous.
The other takeaway from reviews, things you're probably already aware of but 99% of online reviewers aren't, is that tensioner guides and fence rules are always wrong. You always tension and measure from the blade. But they'll 2 or 3 star the best saw on Earth because they don't know any better.
Another thing I just remembered seeing the other day is some youtube guy reviewing his Laguna 1412 equipped with a Laguna Saw King blade. The Saw King is a $150 carbide blade designed for really intensive resawing, stuff like veneers, and this absolute lunatic was making these resaw cuts without a push stick or anything! He had the entire palm of his hand flat passing through what looked to be an eighth away from a blade that could saw off a cow's leg with very little problem. I get a little dizzy just thinking about it.
Anyway, my takeaway between ceramic vs bearing is that ceramic guides are much better in just about every way except they do wear down (after years, not months like the one youtuber said) and you will have to replace them eventually and they cost about 100 bucks or so whereby bearings are still pretty close to being as nice and while you may have to replace them at some point you can get by with slightly worn out bearings much better than slightly worn out blocks, so long term it seems like bearings are the better way to go?
