I haven't tried the inexpensive ones. I have a Dave Powell card fountain which can be built into a card box. It works well but it is a bit knacky and practicing with it, well, is a bit time consuming considering the clean-up.
Ideally, I would want something that would be sitting down and have a delay. So it goes off completely hands free. It looks like the only card fountains like that are in the $400 range and hard to get even then. So I may just throw the cards in the air by hand.