Hydro is fun, I did it for years with veggies and other stuff in a green house inside. I moved one inside and did a sativa grow, it went over six feet. With that said it works great but you have to do a ton of reserach to get it to work the way you want. I built all my stuff did not buy a setup. With that said i is a lot of work, cleaning res, checking ph, nute burn, gnats you name it you have to be ready or will lose any crop if one goes wrong. I now have two girls in soil. Happy Frog is what I chose and it is working fantastic and I have fox nutes I am using for flower but before that I only had to water the girls and they are thriving. It is sooooo much less work, attention etc and I dont notice much dif between their age and the way the last ones were in hydro. In fact, might be the strain, they look better, greener, stronger etc.
If you want any tips on setting up let me know send me pm. For a couple of thousand you can get a nice set up put together.