but rather how best to spend my money.
That's the problem, you are asking others how to best spend your money for you. There are a bunch of us that spent the last 8 years trying to get away from that idea. In any case we don't know what's best for you. If your going to go blow that amount on booze and women, I would say get all of the chronographs you can and write a review of them to better spend your time and money. If you need new tires on your truck and money is tight, you might not need a chronograph at all.
I have a number of chronographs and will have more before I die with any luck, the one I use the most though is a shooting chrony I bought when Sportsmans warehouse had $50 coupons in the paper. Having only $20 in it, it is the cheapest chronograph, so it's pretty much always there when I need it. Out in the shop normally mounted on a tripod or in a little plastic tackle box in my truck if I am going somewhere else to shoot.
There are others that will do other neat things, my Pact XP has the most "extras" of any chronograph I have messed with, it will even print out tables to any distance, by any incremental change, with or with out "maximum point blank range" of any given target diameter and includes wind drift.
If you just want to know how fast a bullet is going for the least amount of money, day or night, rain or shine, indoors or out, this is the cheapest I have.
For full disclosure, I was on Labradar's list after they had it at the SHOT show. After passing release dates for a year and a half and spotty reviews, I decided to hold off for a little while. Will likely buy a subsequent version some day myself.