There's not a great vaporizer product for dry herb unfortunately that doesn't cost hundreds, plus they are mostly "session style" vaporizers where you preheat an oven and are expected to vape it all or else a lot is wasted. There's the vapecap and copies that are more "on demand" like a normal pipe, where you use a butane torch to heat up the device each hit, but they don't work well for people with a higher tolerance and take quite a bit of technique from what I've read. With my experience with a pax too, these things are picky about being perfectly clean or the taste will change, the airflow will be poor, and the switch for it will be gunked to the point the device can't even turn on if its not stored standing straight up at all times. I was also disappointed with reddit's favorite the mflb which has a few inherent flaws (batteries degrade fast and its just not nearly as strong as smoking for whatever reason).
It seems like a market ripe for disruption to be honest, the undisputed king among non portable vaporizers at least is still the volcano vaporizer which came out over 25 years ago. I think that's why distillate cartridges are so popular, because they avoid all these issues dry herb vapes seem unable to work around. They don't smell very much at all compared to a dry herb vape, they are cheap, they have no maintenance issues or learning curve, and they are on and off with a click of a button.
I can recommend the Storz & Bickel 'Mighty' (by same makers as the Volcano) — perhaps plus a pack of spare parts / accessories (so one can postpone cleaning of the cooling / top part of the unit).
Although, sure, it is expensive, as you say, but it's very good. And no matter how gunked up the top cooling part of the unit might get, it will never not turn on/off. I don't find the maintenance of the unit to be a big deal (particularly having an extra top /etc), but as always with such things, YMMV.
The volcanoe from storz and bickel was great for a time. But not ideal for health.
The problem with these types of vaporizers is that they can inadvertantly introduce contaminents to the body. This is largely fungal and bacterial matter that can infect the lungs as it is not destroyed fully in the heating process.
You can taste a lot more when you stop burning the plant and I think that's where the industry needs to go if it wants to develop that way