Take a look at Dean's company:
https://www.jazzcnc.co.uk/

This will give you a good idea of what is required to get a good router for your materials at the top end of hobby machines - I believe they're mostly used for small production environments.

Now your size requirements are lower, but size has a smaller impact on price in this range than you'd imagine (the electronics and spindle and carriages and ballnuts are all the same, but the bits of metal they ride on are just longer, and they're relatively cheap).

What I'm suggesting is look at the bulkyness and the geometry of the designs against the Jazz routers; the closer they are the better, but I suspect you'll quickly see why the prices are different, and the Jazz machines are very good value. Cost me about the same to build mine myself, and you're getting a lot of experience bundled.