You asked for opinion, here's mine.
Got my VS540 in 2011 after 7 years on SP300
rock-n-roll
and even if it had some nice features, I've wasted so much time trying to solve issues that were due to bad engineering. I've had many techs coming, inspecting the printer high & low, telling me I was "within the specs" but curiously last year I sold it and buy a VG2540, the same peoples now admit the VS was shit, had "uncurable" problems due to cartridges position, reason why 2 years later when they released VS540i the inks were now horizontal (...). Color consistenacy was the main issue here. For example I was printing a trailer graphic in 4 tiles: 1 of 'em had a different hue in the gray so ending up with a no-match tile you had to reprint but to realize the new one is worst than 1st one. you go again for a third one and still hitting another shade in it. Crossing my fingers, holding my breath everytime I had larger print to do was no longer an option.
The new VG2is SOOOOOOOOOOOOO much better at everything. Gradient are perfectly smooth, color consistency no longer an issue, even on big prints of solid colors, no more banding*
* banding were intermitents but the one I experienced were of a different kind, what techs called "starving"... let's say I printed a big graphic of 10ft long... everything was perfect and suddently at the 9th feet, just as you almost got it, a lighter pass happened... like lower density of ink, a noticable 12 where the ink flow was different. So frustrating.
Honestly, I had it with these random problems from 2011 to 2020 and I should have get rid of it WAAAAAYYYY sooner. Oh damn...
So many nights working 'til 2-3am trying to save my butt and my soul. Yardsssssssss of precious cast vinyls thrown away, gallons of ink (that precious fluid...) wasted.
I was so upset when I heard the very same peoples telling me they couldn't tell the truth at the moment they were called for service... they had hands tied vs. their employers & HQ.
Yes I decided to stay in Roland's due to all the knowledge I acquired in VersaWork to "bypass" issues and because I knew the OEM inks are premiums (remember I use Roland printer since 2004 (!).
So that being said, good luck