I like hyperspin. It's a little hard, but if you're just using it for mame it'll be easy. It's free but I would recommend paying for access to their ftp so you can download game themes fast and paying for the emumovies ftp access to get videos for your games.
Some people are rude about helping people on their forums if you haven't checked their guides, but they have great guides that really do explain everything (written and video guides).
I'd say look up youtube videos of the frontends and see which one looks more appealing to you.
I used to love Maximus and it still has a certain fondness in my heart, but don't get it! Seriously.

but if you do and you're lucky enough to get a registration code, it is very easy to setup for the systems it supports.
From the ones i've tried here they are in terms of difficulty to setup
more difficult mamewah > hyperspin > gameex > maximus arcade easiest
in terms of most visually appealing (based on defaults) and this is only my opinion
pretty hyperspin > gameex> maximus arcade > mamewah pretty ugly
gameex seems really intriguing, I didn't really fully configure it but I think it has options to captures video when you play games and automates a lot of the process.