I can say I've only owned a few revolvers in my time...but I have been shooting the on the regular since the early 80's.
I've owned Charter Arms, Taurus, S&W, and Ruger over the years. .38spcl, .357 magnum, and .44 Magnum.
I was introduced to the piss poor fit/finish of Taurus revolvers when I bought a new M44 back in 2009. Stripped screws, poor machining finish on parts, and one of the worst machined cylinder ratchets I've ever seen. Even with this, the price won me over and I bought it. Well, it didn't take me long to figure out that in SA, it would often fail to lock the cylinder in position. I traded it on a fugly Ruger Super Redhawk and never looked back. I expected that from Taurus, they're a cheap company, they make cheap stuff.
Back on point. When S&W released the 8 shot 627 a few years back, I knew I had to have one. It took me quote some time, but back in Dec, I put my $$ down on one. It was the only one they had in stock, no other places had one locally, not even a used one (mine is new). I gave it a quick once over and plopped down my $$.
While I getting the funds up to go pay the thing off...I started doing research on the thing online (dumb, I know). Something I saw over and over is issues with new S&W revolvers having various out of the box issues. One of them, a screwed up barrel crown. Long story short, went to pick up my pistol...I immediately looked at the barrel crown...and saw this mess:
Yup, F'd up barrel. How that crap passed S&W QC...especially on a supposed "Pro Series" gun that is claimed to be a step above standard production, is beyond me.
I considered just taking it back, but in the end decided to sent it back to S&W to get fixed. Long story short, contacted them, shipped it back to them (for free), 3.5 weeks later I got it back fixed.
Ok...fixed barrel...now on to the next problem, the unusually hard trigger pull. Something I knew I couldn't bring up with S&W because they'd just write it off to something and send it back.
I'm not exactly sure how to explain it, but the DA trigger pull is "off". It's smooth, but unusually difficult to pull. I thought about attempting to mess with it myself, but then thought better of it. I had an old timer, well seasoned revolver fan friend of mine play with it and he noted how tough the DA pull was as well. I decided that I wasn't crazy and made the decision to get it fixed.
(A little info on my gunsmith, hes an older guy who has been doing revolvers for decades and is very good at what he does. The guy has forgotten more than I know about the inner working of the things, especially S&W.)
When I took the pistol to him a few weeks back, without even touching the thing, the first thing out of his mouth was "I've had to rework quite a few new S&W revolvers lately, every time it's the hand, it's out of timing and fighting the ratchet at the end of the DA pull."
He pulled my pistol out of the box, played with it a few times, and confirmed that to be the case. He handed it back, had me DA pull the trigger telling me to pay close attention to the last 50% of the travel, had me open the cylinder, fake the cylinder close, and pull the trigger again sans cylinder. Huge difference. The pull was consistent throughout the cycle with no ramp up at the end.
I handed it back, he made a few errant comments concerning modern S&W and then assured me that he'd get it fixed and get it back to me.
I don't have it back yet, I'm chomping at the bit to get it. I bought the thing the in Dec and here it is almost March and I haven't even fired a single round through it.
For a $900 purchase, this is just absurd. I expect this from a cheap gun, not from S&W and not from a pistol that costs that much $$.