The others I "looked at" (in the virtual not touching with my hands sense) were:
The grizzly lineup, their new 18" looks decent, the moving table is different than the other options (which have a moving head). They also have a 10x20 which is somewhat cheaper than the Jet (dunno on relative quality but it claims 1/4" minimum thickness so I'd assume its less precise...).
Delta 18 x 36 - mixed reviews on longevity. When new people seemed to like it, but reports of weak parts made me wary (plastic teeth on the bevel gears are one thing I've seen several people mention failing) and supposedly the table is harder to adjust if its out of true..
SUPERMAX TOOLS 19-38 - these seem to review well, and have some nice bells and whistles (like built in DRO), other than that its pretty much a straight up performax clone from what I can tell.
Unfortunately they all appear slightly larger than the 16/32, although the griz and the delta have a different motor config so they squeeze a little more into a little less in relative terms.. Relative WxD dimensions below.
supermax 19x38: 24x40
grizzly 18x36 (G0458): 24x35
jet 16x32: 23x32
delta 18x36 (31-260x): 24.5x28.5
The Jet and supermax both sand to 1/32 the others claim to 1/8. Although I didn't consider that a big deal as I'd be slightly nervous going that thin anyway
Oh I did consider the SandFlea that Art mentioned as well, but the ability to get equal thickness seemed worth the difference.
I do enjoy having the infeed/outfeed tables, especially something on the outfeed to catch small pieces; but I'm not sure I'd pay for them again instead of just building my own, especially if you are tight on space and build a custom base (which I still haven't done.. time.. sigh..). They're relatively thick stamped sheet metal but still stamped sheet metal... and there is no way to move them out of the way. Having tables that dropped down when not in use would be nice (and I would probably make the outfeed slightly larger if I did that).
My final conclusion was that the Jet was probably ~the best choice in that size. If I was willing to move up the 22-44 or the supermax both look interesting but the extra size and cost weighed in.
The other option I considered was to build from scratch as they're fairly simple machines (and lots of plans for them on the interwebs), but decided that I couldn't justify spending the time vs the cost.
My experience so far has been somewhat limited, I ran ~60 thin (1/8" thick by 3/8" wide and ~16" long) through last weekend and a couple had more snipe than I'd have expected, but I think it may have been operator error as most were perfect and just a couple had problems. I've also run several cutting boards through and a couple of panels. Overall pretty sweet. I actually went to 36 grit on the first couple of passes on the cutting boards - that WILL remove stock
It did a good job on the panels (they were smaller ~6" wide by ~24 and ~48" long), I haven't tried anything larger yet, unfortunately I got it after I was done with the door fronts I did for my Mom.
While we're here has anyone used this? :
http://beavertools.com/mirka/mirka-specialty-abrasives-1/mirka-abranet-2/mirka-abranet-2.html
I saw it mentioned on another WWing board, looks pretty cool (pun intended?), I do like the abranet on the ROS so it seemed maybe useful here as well. I wonder if you could go finer without it burning as badly...