limitations of neato xv11 lidar vs rplidar and recommendations for buying a low cost lidar

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Hello All,

I am a new ros user. After experimenting with some ir sensors, ultrasonic distance and discovering inherent limitations I decided to purchase a xv11 lidar from ebay. My intention is just to build a robot that runs SLAM and navigates around a closed environment autonomously. I figured the gmapping package suits my needs and it is said to be robust.

Right before I was going to buy the xv11 lidar I decided to ask in this list. Are there any limitations to this device in a ROS context? The other option is to get a RPLidar, which costs almost four times more. (the xv11 lidar modules can be bought 80 to 150usd on ebay and the RPLidar costs 400usd)

What would be differences between a xv11 and RPLidar, or even a low-end Hokuyo scanner (the lowest cost is around 1200usd) for use with ROS?

There is the obvious parameters of scan hz and lenghth, so while the RPLidar scans at 5.5Hz, Hokuyo scans at 10Hz and the neato scans at even less. So the scan speed would be a parameter, the faster the scan the faster the robot can move yet still acquire data. But I can not estimate what would be the impact of the scan speed while running for example gmapping, what would be the implications when running with xv11 or a faster one, given that the robot will not really move fast. (just a turtlebot derivative)

Usually with electronic stuff, you get a device and then figure out that you needed the more expensive one due to limitations. I just dont want this to happen, and do some more research so I decided to ask in this list.

Best Regards, C.