We looked into this quite a bit when moving last year. There are many things that affect the decision.

We ended up in Reading, MA, and that works for us. I think our situation fits your description quite well (our quiet house is about 0.7 acres, 5 minutes drive from Reading center with stores, etc). 20 minute from Boston with no traffic, 45 with so-so traffic.

The inner cities (cambridge, sommerville, etc) are more expensive/dense but are closer to Boston. Lexington, Arlington are closeish, very nice cities (great schools etc) but are expensive, especially now (house costs, property tax, etc) and lots are smaller. Some cities are cheaper (Waltham, watertown, etc). All of this comes with balance of cost/lot-size/community/closeness-to-city/etc.