Unfortunately there is a chance of getting a lemon no matter what model you buy, that's just the nature of manufacturing. Since you're already familiar with the anycubic, is there a reason not to try again (I don't know if it falls within your price range or not)?

If you just want to start from scratch with a model that is highly upgradeable, I'm a satisfied owner of one of the original Ender 3 Pro models, and I have printed a number of upgrades including a full direct-drive head, so there's a lot of room to grow. Personally I am a fan of any model that you have to assemble yourself because you learn so much just from the process of squaring up the frame and seeing how everything goes together. The biggest complaint anyone has about these printers is the manual bed leveling, which is an art form of its own, but the process is actually pretty straightforward once you understand what each step is for (and don't let anyone tell you that the paper method is the end of it -- that's only enough to barely get you started so you don't damage the machine while actually leveling the bed), and the bed can stay level for a year or more with only minor tweaks. Yeah the Ender printers aren't in a pretty package, and they don't do everything automatically for you, but there's a huge community to help troubleshoot almost every problem and they will produce very clean and consistent prints.