Hi,
The best of a bad bunch is probably the the JVC HR-S9850.
I own a JVC HR-S7722 (a now discontinued model), and while the normal vhs picture is very good, s-vhs looks a bit too shimmery and grainy (even with very high standard s-vhs tapes) so I only tend to use the normal vhs mode (don't even think about using s-vhs ET, the picture is truely terrible).
Panasonic also produce s-vhs recorders, but a friend (briefy) owned one, and it's performance was very disappointing, which is very sad when you consider the great vcr's Panasonic produced a few years ago.
Todays video recorders tend not to be very good, unless you're looking at a digital video recorder. Manufacturers divert very little of their resources to vhs production as it's seen as a dying technology.
S-VHS of today isn't a patch on the S-VHS video recorders of the early 90's.