I am also a novice cyclist, so wont give you any advice as such.
I wanted to get a road bike, and a turbo trainer to use the bike indoors, but my wife also wanted use of something, so we ended up getting a Wattbike Atom. It connect seamlessly with Zwift and I also use connect my Garmin watch to get all the HR data I want on any activity. You can also use a HR strap which connects easily and will be more accurate I suppose. Zwift has lots of training plans and the virtual worlds have numerous routes, so plenty to keep you busy. When using the Atom, I feel Zwift certainly keeps me 'involved' in the ride, lots of data on screen and the 'feeling' of actually riding somewhere helps.
The only issue I have so far, is the comfort. The Atom comes with a 'racing' saddle, but I have already got a 'comfort' saddle which has more padding. This certainly helps, but I managed 42km during the Wolves game on Saturday, and the last 10km was pretty painful on my backside. I guess this is probably down to the nature of indoor cycling, where freewheeling is not something you can do, and standing up feels a little awkward on a static bike, so less respite on the backside. I ill probably need to get some padded shorts and figure out standing up a bit more to make longer rides a bit more bearable. Not sure how much of an issue this would be on a road bike with a turbo, but I would expect fairly similar.
Overall though, I do like Zwift and expect to keep using it for a long time.