I am not going to say that X is worse than Y because both X & Y have lawyers on tap .
Next it can be pot luck and you will get a Y that is better than X .
When you start a process, say pressing bodies, the first few will all be of poor quality till everything warms up .
These are usually scrap but some factories will put them aside for "cheaper" brands because on paper they are written off as process scrap .
When you fit a new set of dies to a press, they have to be broken in .
You do this by running thinner sheet through them which again is written off as process scrap but can be set aside for a lesser quality brand .
Once the dies are broken in then you make your premium product with the full thickness sheet till the dies start to wear , then you go to thinner steel and thinner steel & thinner steel .
The thinner the steel the cheaper the product and the shorter the service life.
I see a lot of stuff out of the AYP factory ( Husqvarna ) that are substantially inferriour to stuff out of the MTD factory .
Now to further muddy the waters , each brand from each factory have a range in both price & quality so it is not a case of saying all Cut Quick branded mowers will be better than all Cut Fast mowers, it just does not work like that .
However mowers are not made by the elves working for free & assembling them from pixie dust .
The difference in manufacturing cost between the top price & the lowest price is quite small .
Now some of the smaller volume brands will do things like fit surplus engines that they get for knock down prices and the same with the trannies so you can get this years bottom price mower that has last years top shelf components .
So you can not write a list as you asked.
But the best guide to quality of seemingly identical mowers is the recommended retail price ( RRP) which negates the discounts volume dealers get & pass on to the customers.
The next best way to rank them is to walk into the dealers showroom and note the models on sale then walk into shops where the only thing they advertise is lowest price or biggest discount .
The mowers that are in these joints are the BOTOM end models of each brand.
The dealers usually will have the same models , they are the ones to avoid .
Also there is also BS advertising .
"Cheapest price or we will discount a further X % " so these retailers use exclusive branding so they can claim that an identical specification mower painted a different colour or with different decals on it that is $ 100 cheaper is not the same mower .
Add to that the exact same mower can have different branding depending upon where it gets sold
I have just serviced a YardMachine ride on , but the parts were listed as Ryobi
