Holy crap, why is this so difficult to answer for the poor OP?
Because he used the word "best".
There is no "best". If there was the answer would be obvious and there would be no point to the question.
In general, when a product manifests itself as "best" the market will single it out. It will, for a brief time, be the only perceived viable choice then spawn a host of imitators. Its trade name will become a generic descriptor for the product.
Think stuff like "Aspirin", "Xerox" and "Kleenex".
If that ever happened with handguns you'd hear such questions as "what's the best Centennial for home defense?" which would include the trademarked Centennial along with all the copies. But handguns are compromises that launch pellets and everyone's priorities and anatomies are a bit different - hence, we have dozens if not hundreds of available choices any of which might be "best" in one or more categories but possibly suck in others.
It's like automobiles - nothing has bubbled up to be a "best" compromise. The Maybach may be best in one or another category but it sucks at "cost of ownership".
Handguns will be a dog's dinner of compromises between size, capacity, weight, reliability (perhaps perceived reliability), capacity, aesthetics, balance, general ergonomics, cost of purchase, usable ammo, trigger quality, magazine vs cylinder, striker vs hammer, etc. ad darn near infinitum.
The rabid beagle seems viable, to which I would add "balled up cat, claws first".
Snarky comments on "best" threads is something I do only rarely - I will now allow the next 99 "best" threads to go by unmolested without pointing out the obvious.