I'll leave the Skywatcher/GS comparison to those that use them. If you have a stroll through the site you'll see which are prefered
There are a number of Meade owners here and the majority of us love them. The Meade LX series (55, 75, 90, 200) are all great scopes though they are "slower" than newtonians at f/10 while the Newts run at from about f/4 up to about f/6 (being probably the most common). For the same size aperture and object will appear brighter in an f/4 than an f/10, but it won't have as much contrast. Most Deep Sky Objects are view more clearly at the faster rates where as planetary and lunar viewing likes a bit of contrast, from f/10 - 12 and much slower, even down to f/30 & 40.
The meades run at between f/10 and (I think) f/12 or 13 (ETXs)So they are a good all round scope. I can pull galaxies no problem with my 8" (certainly not as clearly as an f/4 8" newt) and it excells on planets. The cheapest meade with goto is a Maksukov-Cassegrain ( The other type is the SCT or Schmidt Cassegrain telescope) and is the ETX90 for around $900. An excellent little scope but don't expect stunning views of galaxies though it does a pretty fair job on the brighter DSOs. Your next level are the LX 55s (if they are still available) and the LX75, both mounted on equatorial mounts. Then the LX90 and LX200 both fork mounted. These all have goto and tracking capabilities.
If you want to look at astrophotography then you can do basic planetary photography with a webcam and a tracking mount, some here are brave enough to try it with non tracking mounts and get reasonable results, but they hair is starting to get a bit patchy now.
You can do afocal photography with just about any telescope by holding the camera up to the eyepiece and taking an image. But that's pretty muck confined to the moon, jupiter, saturn and venus. If youwant to get serious then start thinking about a second mortgage on your house.
Well maybe not that expensive if you want just basic gear but easily that much if you want to get really serious. Minimum looking at starting around $5000 - $8000 for a setup that you will be able to get good shots but certainly not like the hubble. though amateur astronomers love to push the envelope and they're images are improving out of site over the last few years using pretty basic equipment. Good quality though, you can't get away from that.
Before you go looking for eyepieces, decide what you want to do. Theat will determine what telescope to get. Then work out eyepieces. Different eyepieces work differently/better in different f/ratio and aperture scopes.
Being a meade owner I can't help you much with the newt stuff but I hope its clarified a couple of things
Clear Skies