Dremels

Looking around at different ones, i am a tad confused, corded, cordless, more Watts innately means better, more heavy duty? Any advice would be appreciated!

I had a similar issue, plus not knowing whether one would be useful enough, so I grabbed the $45 Ozito from Gunning's, if it does the job and will be useful, I can then base further purchase on what I have.

Depends on whatcha wanna do with them mates. If you plan on sculpting or roughing/grinding away with them, go for it. If you want to slice rough, forget about it, way too fast, not enough torque on "low" speed (which is way too fast still). I use mine for cabbing and polishing, and it's a major PITA because the polish splashes all around (hence the stains on my lab coat).

Mainly to use it for odd jobs here and there....Definitely want something that can handle cabbing/polishing, for slicing looking at stand alone machines, i figured they would not be great for such a process. Thanks for the advice, there seem to be about 3 million different dremels out there, taken out all the mid priced ones and dealing with about 6 different dremels in the $100-$250 range, 4200 is looking pretty decent to me.

I've had the entry level model for like ten years, I only had to change the rotor once (my mistake: I gave it too much of a heat when cutting a big doorknob-sized garnet and one of the collector contacts melted and broke off). As long as you get an actual Dremel (the brand) you can't go wrong, that's German quality, the real thing.
I agree for slicing up stuff you need a standalone machine with a big torquey slow RPM motor!

What attachments are good for cabbing and polishing? Curiosity is getting the better of me

I use diamond disks (ebay) mainly to rough out the shape, then wet/dry 600 to 1200 grit sandpaper disks glued to a soft mandrel, and then a 1" buffing wheel loaded with diamond paste (the messy part, since the dremel runs way too high). I'm considering getting a bigger buffing wheel to use with my drill press, mounted sideways to emulate a polishing pad on a cabbing machine. Should do the trick better than my current setup. Since I do one every two months (when time permits and I don't have higher priority things to do) it has been okay but in the end the Dreme really is good to shape small cabs on a tight budget. For engraving it seems okay, unless you plan on doing really precise work, for which a dentists' tool (or a handpiece with a flex shaft) is the way to go. Might shoot a few pictures of what I currently use.

FWIW my latest Dremel processing of a gemstone:

https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=126753#p126753