If playback is the only (main) concern, and you have a big budget, the dragon would be an excellent choice. Especially if you don't want to fidget. If you are playing cassettes from a variety of sources, it is inevitable the you will get tapes recorded with a variety of azimuth adjustments, and the dragon will automatically align itself to play them back at their best. You will get far better use of a cassette collection this way. If you have a large collection, it makes that collection that much more valuble.
If you are not recording and not primarily using the dragon for that purpose, the other reliability issue and alignment issue actually becomes less. With alignments one thing leads to another and effects another, and the complexity of the dragon along with its self-aligning nature makes it harder to keep these alignments at the critical best, which is why the zx-9 and others are used for the absolute best recordings. As parts age and wear the need for alignment is still there, and the alignment issues will compound and make recording alignment the hardest, and with the dragon, there is MUCH more to align to get this up to spec, but for playback, the self-aligning playback head of the dragon will compensate for this better as other alignments for recording start to fall out of spec. In other words, the complexity of the dragon that makes it harder to maintain for the best recording is an advantage for playback.
While 3-head naks are thought of as great recorders, they are really great players. The playback head of the 3-head naks are really in my opinion the best. A lot of them, including those refered to above, are better than nearly anything (if not all) for playback, and usually by a wider margain than most consider because most people evaluate them for thier recording ability. (I would be interested in what TWL remembers in this regard compared to the tandberg).
To put a finer point on it, while a lot of 3-head naks will still enjoy an advantage for play back because of its narrow head gap and alignable nature, dragon would excell in this regard. The dragon was really made to be the state of the art player, made for customers who are willing to spend the money on extracting the most from cassette playback. While there is more than can and will go wrong with the dragon, for playback it will have an advantage in the alignment/maintenence issue.
It all depends on what you are willing to spend on cassettes. If they are important enough to you for the extra dough of a dragon, you would be a good home for one.
