For me the deck used in the Philips VR2020/21/22/23 was probably the worst due to its complexity of pulleys and threading drive cords etc.. Although the N1500 I believe was pretty bad too.
As for the G deck and Charlie deck, as I worked for a Philips ASD the sheer volume we saw made things easier. There were some versions of the the G deck that used a standard mode control motor, rather than using a clutch fed drive from the capstan motor, these hardlly ever failed. It was the felt pad on the underside of the capstan motor that went hard and then there was no 'slip to the clutch. The real test for all of this was to put the machine into FF visual search and then press eject!! If the clutch was OK the gears would stay in sequence, if not click click click then shutdown.
The Sanyo P88 took some getting used to, but wasn't that bad. As for the Samsung mentioned above, Samsung called it the Winner range of models!!!
Towards the end of VHS it was surprising how simplified decks had become and certainly easier to fix.
SJM.