HTC (Wildfire, Desire Z, [rip!]), Samsung (they are/were easy to flash; S3, S5, S7, A5 2017).
I once had Nexus 5 (by LG [rip!]) - I was disappointed, poor quality.
Nowadays, you should have control of a baseband firmware too!
So, looks like the Pixels are the best option.
My steps which worked:
Checksums: