meh
honestly if you want reliability get john deere. and to be completely honest at 1300 bucks you arent really going to be able to get brand new and a good name. maybe look for a slightly used or bump up your price range. the cheapest john deer is like 1500 bucks roughly
another decent name is bolens, we had a bolens that my dad bought in the 80's ... thing is still running and working to this day. i dont know how good the new ones are though to be honest. theres certain aspects like whether spindles are made of aluminum or steel that you ahve to take into account when you are on rough lawns or field type terrains. given you have a nice lawn in a suburb you dont have to worry about abuse so much