Can you give us an idea of your budget, and what you're looking at?

You get what you pay for holds true for strobes.

There are a few caveats to strobes, which makes this a difficult question to answer.

• Not all wattage ratings are the same. Just because a strobe is rated at 250W doesn't mean it actually is. Especially when buying from Ebay only companies, there is no real way to verify the claim. If you plan on doing simple bang-bang shooting, you may find that 250W occurs only after a waiting a while.

• Color consistency. Cheaper strobes will not offer consistent lighting color from shot to shot. This makes it very difficult to take studio shots, because for each shot you will have different light, which makes post processing more time consuming.

• Dangers of cheap equipment. Many of the cheaper ebay only items are made in china with very little safety oversight. Strobes use a lot of power, and shoddier ones may present a major fire hazzard.

Just for reference, I have 3 AB800's which are rated at 320 W/s which I use in my basement studio, and while they can get bright, there are some settings in which they can't get bright enough. Generally speaking, the more wattage you have, the further away you can move your strobes. For close placement strobes, 250 might be okay, but if you use a softbox, and/or move your strobes behind your camera, that wont be enough to illuminate your subject at low/iso, higher apertures. You can always bump your ISO levels up, but I really try to use my camera at the lowest possible ISO for my studio work.