Not as easy as it might at first sound. Revell do some great kits but to be honest, their best that i have had, the 1:48 Mk IX spitfire was not made by them, it was a re-boxed Hasagawa. I have no doubt that other suppliers do the same, I know Airfix do. That said, I think an honest answer would be Tamiya for just about anything. I don't always agree that they are the best kit (the 1:48 Sea Harrier is testament to that) but generally, a Tamiya kit will go together fairly well and, although maybe not as detailed as some, produce a good build. It does annoy me though that their tanks still have the hull pierced for the battery and motor fittings for the remote control versions. Having said that, you can get third party detailing for just about every Tamiya kit so, with added expense, you can take a Tamiya as far as you want.
What I don't understand is their pricing system.. I was looking at a Japanese Battleship at the Peterborough show and it was £135. After the kind stall holder showed me to a chair he explained that it came with metal gun barrels and, possibly a bit of photo etch but he wasn't sure. In the same scale, and possibly a tad older but using plastic gun barrels was a kit of King George V battleship at £46. Now I know in armour and larger scale aircraft, metal gun barrels do look nice but at 1:350? (I think) I don't know if they were worth part of the £90 extra.
Highly detailed kits that give a really good build but need more work as more parts, generally, and more detail than Tamiya has to be the later Eduard. I have heard that some of the early Eduard kits were dogs to say the least. Dragon do really nice surface detail and from what I gather are possibly closer to Tamiya than Tamiya would like in some respects.
To sum up. If I didn't have any resources to see what kit was best, I would play safe and get Tamiya.
