Formlabs is very much the ultra premium end. There are less moving parts, so printers like https://store.anycubic.com/products/photon-mono-m5 are a reliable workhorse very much price competitive with FDM printers.

For tiny models like table-top miniatures, then, I guess quality is subjective, but I certainly think it is more than 10x better. The numbers do not nearly represent the difference in surface finish and detail.

Note, I am not saying they are better in general. I much prefer printing on my FDM and taking a clean part strait of the bed. Poring very smelly toxic chemicals, making everything you look at sticky, having to clean, filter etc, along with more sanding off the supports etc. I also find it much harder to prep designs; is that going to warp as it is pulled off the bed for each layer; is that going to trap uncured resin etc.

Fully agree on toxic chemicals.

When you get a workflow down and need quantity, though, resin is cool. Since it exposes the whole bed at once, I can, for example, pull 24 small prints off of a small printer every 1 hour. 2 days of production, and I have hundreds, using just one printer. With FDM, this particular part, FDM couldn't even make, but if it could, it'd be more like 15 minutes per part - would need a small print farm to keep up with literally one $150 printer.

I don't even have a space for the resin printer right now, though. It really needs a dedicated and well-thought-out station to keep the toxic stuff from ruining your day.

I'm looking into buying a resin printer for our company for very special applications where we need a higher resolution than a FDM printer.

Buying a "premium" model with proper support, a service contract etc. is totally fine for a business investment. I would get lots of raised eyebrows if I were to buy a "hobby machine" for 1/5 of the price.

So... There's a place for machines like these.

I have never used a resin printer but from what I understand its not just layer height but 2D resolution. SLA printers can print 0.025mm layer heights, so a huge improvement over 0.1mm. Not sure cost has to or should be be linear compared to performance.

The difference between FDM and resin is quite substantial. Each style has applications which are easier, and come out better, compared to the other approach. Having one of each, I would never bother printing a replacement support bracket on resin, or printing a miniature model on FDM. With one of either, probably worth it.

The differences between hobby-grade and professional-grade printers are less obvious at this point, more about reliability and throughput than they are about fidelity at this point.

You can get a good quality SLA printer for $200-300, and you can buy FDM printers for tens of thousands of dollars. Just depends on what audience they're targeting.

10x less than an FDM printer in the same market segment, if you want to look at it another way. For the longest time you had to pay the Stratasys tax.