I've got a Meade with tracking. The tracking is/was cool and pretty useful when I bought the telescope five or six years ago. Now a days though, I find it faster and easier to use Google Sky Map on my phone to find things and then aim the telescope manually.
So, my advice would be, spend on optical quality over the tracking, if you have that choice.
And... Speaking of optical quality... The Meade I have doesn't have much of it... It's "okay", but, just barely.
Mesha mentioned binoculars and spotting scopes. Depending on what you really want to do with the telescope, in the price range you are looking at, you might want to consider that. I have a Swarovski spotting scope with vastly superior optical quality compared to my Meade telescope. Of course, it was vastly more expensive too... On the other hand, I also have an old Bushell spotting scope, that cost about $250, that is still also clearly much better optics than the Meade.
Don't under rate the importance of a good tripod or the potential comfort of lack thereof of the eyepiece viewing angle/position either. These things can/will make or break the viewing experience.
- DAA