Well, this is for my homelab, so the decision's down to me -- I personally don't want a house-fire especially since it was lightning that killed my last switch. Even this isn't really budget for me, budget would be something I can easily replace if I need to. Surge protectors and UPSes don't matter down here -- if mother nature says your stuff's dead, it's just dead.
Right now, weighing the options against my financial situation, I'm kind of leaning toward the idea of a pfSense router, a 4 or 5-port 2.5GbE switch (like one of those MokerLinks linked above) and then an 8 or 16 port 1GbE switch chained down from it for my low speed devices. Maybe I'd splurge and get a router that has integrated full 2.5GbE LAN ports. 2.5GbE is still 2.5x better than my current implementation... I just don't know.
I certainly need to do something -- over the weekend a lightning storm came through and took my modem, my router, my 48-port gigabit switch, the power supply for my desk phone, and a decrepit original Raspberry Pi B+ that had been pulling occasional light duty as a telnet to SSH bridge box. My boss generously comped me a new modem, I had a spare router that'll do the job for now, and I had an 8-port 100mbit switch in my junk pile that will, again, do the job for the moment. I replaced the Pi with a much more powerful and frankly underutilized Le Potato, and a replacement power supply for my desk phone is on order.
