SCUBA Pro is great gear. Most dive shops use SCUBA Pro as their rental gear because it is reliable and tough. It can handle people not treating it like their own gear and still work with minimal maintenance.
Only shops who are authorized ScubaPro dealers use ScubaPro as their rental gear ... and not all of them do, because rental gear spends a great deal of time in the pool and that tends to make it not last very long regardless of whose gear it is.
Many shops push SP gear simply because it generally takes a large initial order to become an authorized SP dealer ... and once purchased, the vendor needs to move that equipment in order to pay the bills. Some shops only carry one brand of gear because that's all they can afford to carry. If you're only going to carry one brand, SP is a logical choice because it's well-known, quality equipment ... and brand recognition is one of the major factors in people choosing what to purchase.
To answer the OP's question about other equipment ... I don't know of a single brand that I would consider less than reliable. Different vendors offer different features, different levels of customer service, and different materials. Very few equipment manufacturers make their own gear anymore ... most comes out of factories in places like China, India, Indonesia, and other parts of the world where labor is cheap. Many brands will offer similar products, because those products are all made in the same factory and "branded" with a particular equipment vendor's logo. Some are exactly the same, while others may have slight differences due to specifications from the equipment "manufacturer".
Case in point ... Apeks, Dive Rite, Hog, and some smaller vendors all make a particular regulator that looks and functions EXACTLY the same. In some cases the repair kits for those regulators is EXACTLY the same. In other cases, there are some slight differences in some of the internal parts ... just enough to make them incompatible.
Most brass & glass SPG's come from the same Italian factory ... they just put different vendor's names on them.
One well-known vendor has made a fortune "cloning" other people's good ideas, and contracting Chinese vendors to make knock-offs. Frankly, their products aren't any less quality than the folks they "borrowed" the idea from ... they just saved the cost of R&D and field testing prior to putting the product into production.
For the occasional diver, just about any equipment out there will be reliable enough ... failures are rare, and you'll more than likely be replacing that gear because you found something else you like better long before it wears out. So for most, the "smart" purchase is the one that costs less.
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
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