I would ask all your neighbor boats what they are using. Since local conditions will wind up favoring one paint series over the others. You may find that you don't have to buy the real expensive stuff. While copper based paints are more expensive as a whole, you only need good enough to keep the bottom clean for the amount of time you plan to keep the boat in the water between paintings.
Marketing brochures do not keep the barnacles off, but they are good at removing boater's bucks from your wallet.
If you have the time, your fellow slip mates will be a very good guide on which paints do a good job in your local conditions. Make sure to write down what they tell you. Make sure to ask how many coats they put on also. I have seen people complain about paint performance, and mainly because they did not put enough on the first time. Haul out fees, and labor are the main costs, with paint being a smaller percentage of the total.
For our budget minded customers we are putting bottom paints to the test by painting test strips and letting them sit in the water. That way customers can decide which paint makes sense for their application. This will be a continuous test, and will show which paints have the most endurance in our local conditons, and will give us a good indication which paints live up to their advertising.
