Depends on the type of fishing you plan on doing. If you are fishing at night making a lot of casts with plugs, eels, or jigs you should certainly have a levelwind; the loss in distance is negligible compared to the ease of use when falling asleep on your feet.
I can't really comment on the Penn international baitcasters because I have never used one. I have been very happy with ABU Garcia baitcasters with levelwinds in both the 6500 and 7000 size. In the 6500 size there are several models with a bearing levelwind that virtually eliminates the "loss of distance
" you get with a levelwind.