One thing to keep in mind is that Linkerd is pretty much strictly k8s only one while Istio and Consul Connect have first-class support for out-of-cluster services as well as e.g. Nomad. Relying on linkerd digs you waaay deeper into k8s lock-in.

This may be fully acceptable for you, but should not be glossed over.

From my experience, linkerd had the most seamless deployment to get to the most feature-complete out-of-the box experience with monitoring etc. But as it goes with these things there’s a much bigger amortized cost in terms of magic to unwind if you need to integrate it.