Brand opinions needed: Black Box or Transition Networks

In this day and age not being able to finding a review on a device or whole family of devices raises a red flag in my mind. That is the case with the switches I am looking at by the titles mentioned brands.

Does anyone have experience with these two brands of devices? Black Box or Transition Networks? There is plenty of info on their media converters but I am building a small network all over single mode fiber and finding switches with more than 4 sfp ports without paying for a full blown Cisco modular switch that is 10k plus.

I’ve got a dozen endpoints all around 5 to 10 km apart per connection. Just a simple layer two network with RSTP will get me to a functional solution. I’ve got two “core” rings made up of 6 locations. Two of these locations are a part of both rings. I have the ability to connect almost every endpoint to 2 of the 6 core looped switches for redundancy and the core switches need 6 sfp ports while the endpoints I can get away with just 2 plus a few RJ45 Ethernet ports.

Black Box and Transistion Networks both have some models with 6-10 sfp ports in the 700-1,000 dollar range. Im not finding an equivalent of brand name devices. I’m replacing a old serial based radio network so I’ve got more bandwidth than I have ever dreamed of to just monitor real time data and issue control commands. But trying to look to future needs of my network too.

Also, be gentle. Electrical engineer here wearing my network cap and balancing a small budget trying to connect a dozen devices at a dozen locations. Plus the more complex it is the harder time I will have managing it with the few resources I have. Hence not mentioning or really wanting to use Cisco as I don’t have any education on them. I know the basics but need a GUI to prop up my theoretical networking knowledge.

Thanks in advance. Just trying to do the best with what I have.

Let me know if r/networking isn’t the right place with this. Long time lurker, first time poster.