I forgot they released the Z7. The main reason I recommended the ordinary Arty is because I have one sitting here :) It's also a bit cheaper, it seems... Digilent will apparently be releasing a Spartan-7 Arty variant soon, too. (No clue what the new Spartans will have to offer...)
TBH I'm not sure whether new people should really jump into combo SoCs, since there's a lot more to manage in some sense. OTOH, having an ARM processor at hand makes some interfacing tasks actually practical!
As far as combo SoCs go, this one IMO seems to be the best deal, especially as the $200 'Black' board gives you a free SDSoC license and a lot of connectivity: https://www.crowdsupply.com/krtkl/snickerdoodle No ethernet, but a breakout is coming...