I don't believe that embedded versus external there should be a quality difference for most applications. RIP time will no doubt suffer. Don't you just have to load Command Workstation on another computer and program the job from there? Perhaps there are some features disabled but I would be surprised if it just dumbed down the print quality itself.
One thing concerning is the $500/month lease term budget...not sure that you could get a worthwhile machine with service and supplies for that? That doesn't add up. Definitely approach with caution.
Sorry, going to have to disagree with you on this one.
I had 2 of the EXACT same presses, just one with embedded rip and one with external fiery rip. Send the exact same file to both machines and get completely different color. Just for fun I swapped the external fiery for the embedded and printed the job again. The colors between the two machines now magically matched. After that I bought an external fiery for my machine on ebay that matched what I already had and left behind all my color/quality issues going from machine to machine.
There was a HUGE difference in output between the external vs embedded.
External fiery every time.