Not sure what you budget is, but I held out for a used Felker from Craigslist. I think getting a used, quality saw is much better than buying a cheap, new one. (I happened to get a Felker Tilemaster XL, which can rip 24" tiles or 18" on the diagonal.)

It wasn't cheap, but I figure I can resell it when I am through.

You can make a false top from hardibacker to allow you manage larger tiles. That can make the fence less finctional and the miter guide useless. 1/4" is ok if your only pushing the tile size a little. Much thicker and you'll really slow down the cut. I don't find it an issue. Have the cheap Skilsaw version I bought to do my dads bath as it was too far and complicated for me to borrow a good one. Has held up better than I expected.

We bought ours at Home Depot. I think it is a Ridgid. I can double check. I know it wasn't the cheapest one but I think it was the next one up in price - somewhere around $200. We originally bought it a couple of years ago for a project that never happened and it sat in the box in our garage until last fall.

Since September it has been used for our master bath remodel, which involved cutting down a lot of tile because we couldn't find the size we wanted, and my BIL borrowed it to do the bathroom floors for two bathrooms at my in-laws home. He is a professional marble installer and used to working with more expensive equipment and he commented that it was a decent saw. It certainly isn't top of the line, but since we only expected to need it for one or two projects we didn't want to invest a lot of money in one. It's done the job with no problems.