As to the reputation of TASCAM, they are a long-established professional brand, which means at a minimum that service and replacement parts are generally available. Over the years they have delivered equipment that has ranged from OK quality to pretty good sometimes; there's no one quality level that they inhabit exclusively. They're neither top-rung nor bottom-rung.
But a lot of their gear sees steady use in studios year after year. It is generally designed to be maintained, which is worth a lot to a studio--as opposed to consumer gear that when it breaks, there's no way to fix it or to get it fixed at reasonable cost. In a studio, sooner or later almost everything breaks at least once.
Modern recording products rely greatly on internal software ("firmware"). This has changed the design and development model for audio products; very often the programming is contracted out. Testing the resulting software in all possible operating states is painfully expensive and requires nearly the same expertise as writing and designing the software does, so it tends to be underbudgeted in a cost- and deadline-driven market. That can easily lead to products that are failure-prone in the field.
A shiny appearance and brilliant specs tell us less and less about a product as time goes on in this business.
--best regards
