But its comfortable to shoot, has a great grip, great weight, good action, is made in germany where they generally make good guns, and is reliable.
i'm not saying Taurus as a company in general is great or even good. they do have some specific decent products (TX-22, Raging Bull, Judge, and the PT92/99 series). as the one stand-out exception to other Taurus products, their Hue 92 clones are refreshingly good since they have a history making them properly for decades both for military and police use as well as exports. i, and others, have worked with them for years without trouble in film, and many more use them as cheap Berettas in general for security or personal protection since they were at one point half the price of a genuine Beretta.
in essence, i'm saying if you were to put a modern Taurus 605 next to a modern Weihrauch Windicator with it's cast alloy frame (vs the 605's steel frame) and rough machining on what should be a much more precise action, complete with poor forcing cone fitting and too high torque making it prone to cracking, or unfortunate tolerance stacking that leads to misalignment of the pawl or hand, or cylinder and barrel, the Taurus comes out looking better. if you want a cheap revolver and don't want to take chances but a used gun is squicky, the next one up is an Armscor revolver.
i do vaguely remember that the 605 is close to a J frame in size and the Windicator was larger, so for comfort in the hand that's definitely something to consider. and sticking with .38 spl (even +p) in the Windicator should be alright as long as everything else lines up properly.
also i wouldn't lean into "German = good" too much. "Kimber = good" and "Colt = good" falls into the same trap. they have some products that are absolute garbage. there was a point where they were cranking out crap into the British market, then after the war, they had a lot of shit and cleaned up their act in the 60's into something worth having. however you always get shitter companies. Rohm is one of them. Rohm made absolute crap revolvers on the super cheap purposely for export into markets that lacked precise enough machine work locally to make revolvers. the super cheap imported pocket pistols fell into the same box, but were a cut above. Rohm's RG-10 was cast alloy with cast parts finish machined on worn tooling and hand filed to fit without further testing and sold to compete with ring of fire guns from Raven Arms (and derivative).
Weihrauch isn't Rohm and make pretty decent air guns. the Windicator is competent and safe. for the $300 price point it's hard to beat, but it's not the only one at that price point and there are arguably guns available at that price point.
Is there a de facto standard for brand when it comes to ear protection? I've heard there are earphones which can filter out loud noises while passing through voices and shit, but I don't know if those are memes.
Walker or Peltor with a shoutout to Sordin and Howard Leight. i have used Peltor and Sordin professionally and prefer Peltor in general, but Sordin is much more modern and is more helmet friendly. Howard Leight has a good record in sports shooting and are very good for the money asked - almost at the point of not worrying if they're damaged.