Bless the diligent souls that create beautiful hand printed work in the color darkroom. The world is a better place for their efforts. For myself, I found it was not at all FUN. Feeling around in complete darkness loading the paper. Watching the drum spin for half an hour. Finding the color is wrong, and needing to start over, (at $$ per sheet). Only to find in the morning some chemical streak missed seeing... On other hand, B&W darkroom is a blast! Creative. Fast. (relatively) inexpensive. Useable yellow safelight. Nothing beats a 6X7 negative printed on fibre paper! (cept maybe a 8X10 contact printed). Alas, do not even do much of this anymore. Needs dedicated dustfree space, which do not have. Film scanners and photoshop can work wonders using corner Jiffy-Mart processing for the messy parts. I'll not comment about quality, as that is a very multifaceted topic. My advice would be to find a local school/hobbiest group/etc, and work in their darkroom for awhile to see if you like it, before spending a lot of money. There are always work-arounds for things like timers. Important thing is if you like the work. If you find you like it, go for it!