You generally get a good tough gun at a fair price out of Ruger. There are better guns, God knows I lust over a Freedom Arms '97 in 357. That's a $1500 gun. I own an otherwise similar $500 Ruger. Would I really have triple the value out of an FA? No, not really.
Ruger's also tend to respond well to homebrew gunsmithing and modding, better than any other brand across their whole product line. My NewVaq357 wears a grafted-on SuperBlackhawk hammer I installed myself, and is absolutely not alone in the "FrankenRuger" category
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Out of the box, an S&W will generally feel nicer, although there's exceptions. But if you're willing to put in a bit of sweat equity, you'll end up with a better gun in many cases, one you paid less for, will stand up to more abuse and one you personally know inside and out.
They also tend to treat their customers well.
They'll do recalls at the slightest hint of a "systemic problem" in a model, which they sometimes take flak for. But they make it good, pay the shipping and sometimes toss in a freebie like an extra mag or something. I can think of a lot of Taurus models that should have been recalled for major stuff like frame cracking, but instead customers were forced to pay shipping back to Taurus to fix their errors.
In one case, a 605 (357 snubby) I was involved in was a complete and utter birth defect case (brutally mis-aligned frame) and I was told the entire model was back-ordered. I had them ship me another gun worth slightly less (38+P snubby, concealed hammer) rather than wait for a 605. I sold that 38 immediately upon receipt.
So yeah, I'm a bit of a Ruger fanboy.