I have five tape decks and two of them work. Most of them were fairly cheap (<$40) but I tried buying one really elite Sony deck with Dolby S that I got one good recording out before one of the heads wound up rotated 90 degrees away from where it should be.

I think the story is that the quality of a tape deck is inversely proportional to its need for maintenance. Any deck made in the last 20 years has the same mechanism

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-last-cassette-pl...

which is mediocre sounding but reliable. TEAC makes a dual deck model that costs about $600 (crazy!) but probably sounds about as good as $50 deck from back in the day, they say is the most dependable deck they ever made.

Between having two A/V systems and a tapehead in the family I am still looking for another one. I'd like an elite deck but probably won't get one. My son brought home a reel-to-reel that didn't work and he's still hoping he can get one that does.