My two cents:

Mission, Resenate, and Mayflower are places you go to for lesser quality but good deals if you think their product are nice. Good Chem and Botanist have great quality very often but not every time. Trulieve (aka Clear Sky / Blue River Terps) literally killed an employee through negligence and is one of the worst MSO's around that practices incredibly scummy business that literally fights to give them a monopoly / keep smaller companies out / lobbies against the right to grow at home. They have some good stuff but giving them money is basically helping to make the cannabis industry worse in the US.

Sunnyside, Diem, the Vault, Major Bloom, and other places are very much hit or miss depending on what you buy - most of what comes from their personal stuff is mids quality IMO (or they only wholesale from others). And if you like their stuff, no judgement on you because we all have our tastes but I've yet to see anything from any of these places that has impressed my cannabis snob tastes.

It's a schlep, but I do recommend checking out Local Roots out in Sturbridge for their hash and flower or products from Bountiful Farms out in Natick are very often excellent as well. Of course, lots of great caregivers and small dispensaries in Maine and there's even a few small batch places that sell to a couple of the RI dispensaries (although that's definitely a pain in the dick to go through).

Home grown is the way to go. For newbies, get a 2x2 or 3x3 space in your home, get a cheap growtent setup with a LED, buy some cheap supersoil like Ocean Forest, and plant a few autoflower seeds or clones you get from a dispensary. Water for a few weeks, once in flowering or flipping to flowering get yourself a cheap organic bloom booster and feed once a week. Keep the temperatures in the upper 70s to low 80s in the tent while your lights are on. That's it. You too can have 3-6oz per plant yields and be growing for like $10/oz of whatever strain you want. ...And then after enough practice and runs, you'll eventually get it down cheaper and cheaper and better and better quality.