Reprapdiscout offers 3 kind of hotend: Hexagon, Merlin and Trinitilabs Magma. Whilie merlin and hexagon have almost same price trinitilabs magma is much more expansive. What’s the differece of performance of the 3 kind of hothend? Is there anything in performance that justify Price? Is there any "gold standard " for hotends?
Gold standard for hot ends are the E3Dv6, and the ubis hot end from printrbot.
I believe there is some consensus that the e3dv6 is the gold standard. I have two on my desk but haven’t yet printed with them so I can’t say personally for sure. There is less expensive lite version.
Regarding your question, there are lots of good reports from the Hexagon and not so much from the Merlin, I’ve only ever seen one post about it.
Lastly the Trinity Labs things surprised me. Trinity Labs doesn’t exist anymore as far as I know due to the owner, Ezra, dying not too long ago. I’m not sure if there’s some arrangement for reprapdiscount to use their name but it seems very strange to me. It may be that the hotend design was open sourced.
The hexagon lulzbot is using is the reprap discount one. It’s not bad. I like e3dv6 much better for basically the same money.