I guess "mid price" isn't the most helpful term when machines vary from $100 to $100,000 huh?

I think the X-Carve 3-axis wood carver uses stepper motors with belts of all things. The Shapeoko Pro is leadscrews and stepper motors. Wazers, I believe, are belt-and-servo driven. And a lot of 'CNC conversion kits' you can order online use stepper motors. Plus of course laser cutters have really low torque requirements, so they've got a lot of design freedom.

Arguably those are "cheap" rather than "mid price" it just felt weird to declare a $4000 machine to be "cheap"

Actually, it was the Shapeoko 1 which introduces the idea of belts (MXL), then switching to Gates GT2 belts with the SO2 (ob. discl., I got a free machine for doing the instructions, see Github). Since it was opensource, the X-Carve was forked from the SO2, though the X-Carve Pro was a completely new design.

Note that belts were continued through the Shapeoko 3 (I got a machine as a "thank you"), though the Z-axis got a leadscrew in the Z-Plus upgrade, then the Pro (since, I got a job with the company and got an XXL as part of my employment), then the 4 (the original Pro is referred to as a 4 Pro sometimes), and it is only with the 5 pro that ball screws were switched to for all axes (and I now have a 5 Pro).

For an example of what a belt-drive CNC can do see:

https://community.carbide3d.com/t/hardcore-aluminum-milling-...

I think there are CNC machines that cost 100 times more than US$100k.