Of the ones you quoted, I still myself firmly belive (*as owner of an original t3a, that has been modded a fair bit). That it's still the best of those you shortlisted.
OFC there may be other irons come out in future, and some might be a bit more suited for certain mobile applications. But for a regular general purpose bench iron, that can also do micro soldering + both higher power soldering. It's just all round the best you can get. And that includes whatever JBC wants to sell you these days. I absolutely stand by it with my own money. Actually I haven't purchased the ESRA, JBC or Metcals myself. Or tried them. But just going by what I've seen (in detail online). T3a still is my preferred iron.
it seems that t3a had some issues at start and no esd or current protection if mosfet dies
Thing is they aren't actually much big issues at all. In terms of the ESD AFAICT it's not to do with the mosfet? Only regarding the stand detect function. Which is that extra 4mm banana jack wire you plug in seperately into the cradle. To let it know when you've replaced the handle into the cradle (to send into idle mode / sleep mode).
Thing is if that GPIO dies, you can replace the MCU and reflash the firmware. Or alternatively the simplest mod for putting a TVS diode onto the main pcb... it ain't that hard! And so long as you have another iron available to do that mod with. Then it's sufficiently protected.
You can take mods further, but at a minimum i would just say you only really need to add the TVS diode (and thats it, no cap or other passives needed, although it doesnt hurt, it's just not technically actually required). And you will be sufficiently ESD protected.
The other matter of pre-order at least 1x spare MCU from aliexpress is also another form of backup protection. In case either that (now protected with the mod) GPIO line dies. Or anything else (other GPIOs) dies. Then you can just replace the $3 mcu on the $150 station and it should all be fine after a reflash. Which... probably will never happen after TVS mod.
Oh and replacing the capsin the PSU - it's also recommended for maximum lifetime of the station. But not any sort of a hard requirement. That would run you about $5-$7 maybe, and could be ordered at the same time as ordering the TVS diode from digikey / similar. But only mentioned since it's just convenient matter and simple to do when you already have to open up the station anyhow to do the TVS mode. To then do it at same time.
Again - these mods are optional. If you are lazy or want to defer those to some inteterminate later date. Then it's entirely your own choice(s). They just are some common sense to know about before buying it is all. And i'm sure you can go out and purchase many other products in 2023 which have far worse manufacturing defects (from factors)... like well, basically any car(s) for example.
So all in all, not a reason not to buy. Rather a plus. To know how to properly service this unit. From community contributed information / guidelines. Couldn't be happier about it really.
Only 1 thing I would want to see improved on T3a is to have some "manual" push button mechanism added into the firmware. As an actual alternative to setting down in the cradle. That you could use either / or to put into sleep mode.
Still on the v1.26 firmware. So not sure if they ever added that later on. However I suppose.... another mod could add a dedicated physical switch? I might actually be motivated to do that. Having not twigged on to that (until just now)...
But you know... there are other irons can come out. Either recently or in future. That also uses these same official C245 cartridges. (or the other C210 / whatever ones).