How long is a piece of string?
If you go down the 350 family route you have a lot of "options" from a reasonably priced machine to "sky is the limit"
120 - not so much.
If it is just a machine for A to B without hot and high - a tidy 350BA on short gear. Ground and rotor clearance is no different to a 120 or 130.
Lower weight, more speed, less vibration. With a "BA" and a "1B" engine you should get a reasonable speed with a low fuel burn.
MTOP and MCP are the same.
Fly it at an altitude where the bleed valve closes - happy days. You should true out at about 130 knots. 130's have lots of room but also
built in headwind. Plus they have a lot of vibration from rotor wake which is also built in.
The various "flavours" are listed
here to give you a heads up.
As to the flight characteristics and it being "squirrely" near the ground and all the other crap you hear is just that - crap.
The 350 does not have an isolating mechanism for the elastic mounting of the transmission and all you will be doing is inducing PIO if you
are a stick stirrer. Like all the SA models before it, leave some cyclic friction on and learn to fly without stick stirring.
Pushing the pedals unnecessarily will do the same thing.
2p worth.