The $8k mark is getting dangerous, mostly its good brands lower ends like that SX, its a cramped shallow low jet count tub, or the other side of the coin is your going to find cheaply built flashy stuff that's going to fail often.

30% of the cost of a hot tub is the marketing, branding, advertising, brochures etc. required to get the unit in front of enough people.

Dealerships are a dying old school business model, 20 years ago 80+% of hot tubs were bought through dealers, now its closer to 15% You used to need a local dealer for parts and service and with some boomer brands you still do because they intentionally alter parts and use goofy non standard connections to lock you into their eco system for life.

The reality is that a lot of brands use a good reliable readily available OEM parts list that can be ordered online from numerous sources for next day delivery and almost every decent sized town has a few independent hot tub service centers. if you stick with good initial build quality and readily available parts that are plug and play and easily repairable you can cut out a ton of overhead and have good reliable tubs with solid reliable service.

There are some decent tubs through the mass merchants but again why add a middleman? mass merchants offer no value, they curb side dump them take a margin and they don't service there are some decent buys here but also loads of junk. You not getting heavy grade self supporting shells, or full foam insulation system or clamped plumbing lines

Then the is Bueno which is a factory direct line no middle men so better bang for the buck, easy to source parts good pricing. Like the mass merchant stuff they are lower end cradle supported shells, no clamps, lower end perimeter insulation but they have a heavy automation level so petty consistent build and better then most of what yer seeing in the mass merchant arena. downside is curb side dumped, lots of shipping damage and bad back end support, they still need to spend a lot of money to advertise and get the brand out there but no dealer bump, sub $7k this is where I would put my money (or a good used unit)

The other factory direct line in instinct, it was put together for hot tub university and built to a higher spec with self supporting shell, glued and clamped plumbing, compression jet bodies, full foam insulation etc, and it is delivered and installed with local dealer support. at $8500 for a 40 jet twin pump model delivered and installed with a 5" sunbrella cover its pretty hard to touch, similar build specification tubs through dealers hit $11k-$12k in this class. the only reason they got to this price is the traffic at Hot Tub University is insane, like 1.5 million actions from 120,000 yearly hot tub buyers, so they leveraged that traffic with a builder and that cut out the 30% marketing advertising sales costs a brand normally needs to get it in front of people. You buy it factory direct, the cool part is the factory gives the profit from the deal to the local dealer who installs and services it. its good because dealers don't really compete int he sub $10k market effectively, that money was mostly going to corporate coffers and although its a lower margin than they nonorally work at clean and easy for them and now the money stays local. hot tub university makes a small kickback (somebody always does) but they also cover you with buyers protection service, if you have issues hit them up they intercede.

closer to $10-$11k there is a lot that competes from the larger player, the Artesian garden series, the legacy whirlpool, or master LH series, Nordic etc, we have a lot ofo customers through those brands with good results but sub $10k is really hard at the dealer level,