I used Pair right after they were accredited as a registrar in the 90's up till the mid 2000's but found they were expensive both for domain registration and for hosting. Great customer service but for a commodity like a domain name it's just not worth it for me.
Last I checked pairNIC was > $15/year for .com etc. That adds up when you have many domains. Therefore I use pairNIC for the domains I really care about, and Namecheap for the rest.
it seems they are down to $9.99/year: https://www.pairnic.com/prices.html
I have used them since they opened (2002) and never used anybody else after that, because I have never been dissatisfied. (I don't remember if the box is checked by default, but they definitely offer whois privacy, along with services like custom/dynamic DNS and some other stuff, at no extra charge).
Their site is kinda barebones and old-school, but there are real humans in the rare case you actually need one, and they've never done me wrong.
So for whatever that's worth: another recommendation on HN.
[1]: https://www.pairnic.com/about.html