Agreed, a used Photon XT 6.5x50 is good place to start with NV. There are a couple on E bay at the moment.
You will need an external IR illuminator because the one on the XT is pretty crap.
You'll get a good LED based illuminator for less than £100, but at the moment, the new generation of laser illuminators, outperform all the LED based illuminators.
I recently bought a Solaris SRX and it's significantly better than any of my many LED based illuminators, including sunnragers, T50s and even a T74
Cheers
Bruce