My own limited experience... Cisco is expensive but still the gold standard if you want things to just work.

In my limited experience with Cisco and some other vendors. Cisco is the least frustrating. Even their small business lineup.

It tends to just work most of the time.

Other vendors have many more little papercuts. Like being crap at either switching or routing, being picky about fiber transceivers, getting confused about STP once you first configure them.

Far from Cisco being perfect, but it is solid.