As a newbie I don't (yet) understand all of the specs listed on the LA524 sheet but the ones I think are important are:
maximum lift height @ pin (110.7)
maximum roll back angle
digging depth
lift capacity (LA524 has pin/max height, 500mm forward/max height, pin/1500mm height, 500mm forward/1500mm height)
I don't know if breakout force or roll back force are important and the time required to raise, lower, dump and roll back are not important to me.
Thanks
Smokeman, I don't know if this would be helpful, but here are some of my thoughts... use or ignore as you see fit.
Lifting power (how much will the darn thing pick up) is probably the most important benchmark, but even that doesn't always give the full picture. Some of the early hydraulic loaders on Ford tractors of the 1950's and '60's, for example, could lift great amounts, but the front axles of the tractors they were mounted on weren't quite so strong. So having a well-integrated package means a lot.
You need to know how high it will lift so you can determine its suitability for loading a dump truck, for example.
Breakout force tells you how strong is the "curl" function. That's important for digging, because when you drive the bucket into a pile of dirt, or under a stump, or into the ground, you need to break it loose with the curl before you can lift it.
The cycling times tell you how quick or jerky the movements will be. Larger equipment tends to be a bit slower, since it takes more fluid to fill the larger cylinders, but that's also a function of how much hydraulic pumping capacity you have.
The digging depth tells you something about digging into level ground.
But, when you've studied the specs until you're cross-eyed, you still need to actually try out the different units to get a sense of what works best for you. A person would be silly to get a tractor they don't like very much just because it had a loader that had 5% better specs.
My question to you is why are you benchmarking two such very different loaders (LA844 vs LA524) in the first place? Both the FEL's and the tractors they go on are very different. If it's just because of similarity in price, I think you need to define your functional needs more precisely. But that's just free advice. Whatever you do, I also wish you all the best success.