I've owned a Taurus for 4-5yrs. I have had no malfunctions of any kind. I can also say the same for a Charles Daly compact 1911 I bought a couple years before the Taurus. So there you have it, the ownership of a Brazilian and Philippine pistol with good results.
I just spent a couple weeks working on and shooting a RIA Tactical. It would almost never chamber the first round from the magazine. The owner brought me a dozen or so Golden Sabers and Gold Dot rounds that he had attempted to chamber. The bullets were set back in the case .020-.030 from hitting the feed ramp on chambering. It was also shooting quite high at 10 yds. In order to make it function properly, I had to polish the breechface, tune the extractor, and refit the barrel after installing a shorter link. The breechface and the lug area were the roughest I have ever seen on any pistol. The metal was also the softest. 300 grit cleaned it up in no time. I also observed that the firing pin had to be indexed a certain way (due to being out of round), to make the firing pin move in the channel without binding.
A complete tear down of the Taurus when I first got it home, was quite the opposite. Very few tool marks internally, and the internals were well fitted. Some of the small parts on the Taurus are MIM, but are easily replaced at little cost if that bothers you. I have observed a couple of broken safeties that appeared to be due to faulty MIM processing.
I am told Taurus customer service really blows. No personal experience with that. Aftermarket parts are plentiful and inexpensive, and most should be capable of replacing any failed parts without the need to send the gun in for repairs. The frame and slide of the Taurus are good quality forgings and should last a couple of lifetimes.
For my money, I'd buy the Taurus.
str1