Budget and use (application) drive most field recorder purchases. For basic recording the Zoom's are nice little units, as are several other similar products, but I have not kept up. Zoom units are very popular, small and lightweight, and fairly rugged. They do a great job for basic recording and as I said I use mine mainly for rehearsal and capturing ideas (and in the past for lessons so students could hear what they sounded like "out front"). The user interface is not the best, though that is also true for some high-end units, handling noise and self-noise is not great, etc. The mics are inexpensive but actually do a pretty good job. There are some pattern issues but as a small X-Y pair I couldn't complain. They are good inexpensive field recorders. The larger, much more expensive Sony was pretty much the standard for pro recording, along with another unit or two I have forgotten (this was a number of years ago) that were much more than the Sony. A friend had the Sony 50 and we compared; it was quieter as expected but for live recording the difference was pretty slight and neither of us was sure we'd be able to tell blind (we talked about doing that but never got around to it).
I did find the phantom power struggled to drive larger condensers (AKG, Neumann, etc.) and maintain a low noise floor but since that was not my usual use it wasn't a concern to me (I had a regular recording rig for that sort of thing, i.e. when I was getting paid to record concerts).
FWIWFM - Don