Hi I'm a newbie here, but I feel this is a topic that's itching to be addressed by me.
I used acoustic drums for about 20 years and moved to Japan. Cant practice here due to the noise issue, so I pretty much gave up for over a decade.
About a year ago I discovered V-Drums (Roland) and I immediately tried them out and bought them same day.... The mesh skins are so lifelike to play that I feel like im playing a regular acoustic kit (aside from the obvious noise reduction and the pads being considerably smaller than a real tom. The cymbals are pretty lifelike, and the changeover from real drums to electronic drums was pretty swift and painless.
So, go for mesh heads on an electronic kit, such as roland 4 or roland 9. You wont regret it.
Upsides are...
1) You can practice pretty much anytime of the day or night without cops banging on the door about the noise. A person can sleep even in the next room...
2) The kit is smaller and easier to squeeze into a room - good for people flatting or at home with the bedroom allotted for such items. Lighter for transportation.
3) The kits have reasonably versatile sound-banks and presets, so you can pick a preset kit or do what I do - create your own custom kits.
4) Criminals in the area don't know you have musical instruments in the house, reducing the risk of theft. (This was an issue in my old neighborhood - I just thought Id mention it as a point)
5) Second hand kits can be relatively cheap if you ont mind a bit of wear and tear.
6) You can connect your ipod and jam to tracks you love, and mix the volumes so you can hear the music alongside your playing.
7) Inbuilt metronome, recording function for any home studio music projects or internet based projects (just press record and that's it)
8) People in the neighborhood cant hear how terrible you are when you first start practicing hahaha
The list goes on. Mesh head electronic kit. I 100% recommend it. They changed my life.
If you want to hear my kit, go to my You-tube channel - there's many drum covers...
http://www.youtube.com/user/HeisW140 and with the right tweaking, your kit can sound pretty real indeed.... and its not difficult to do. 100s of kits in one package.
And you can modify the drum kit to suit the band youre jamming to - I always change the snare and hats to match the drummer im covering. Pretty easy too ;-)
Hope my input helps ;-)
http://www.youtube.com/user/HeisW140