The ME262 had horribly unreliable engines. It was an awesome breakthrough in many ways, but I see it more as a beta version that was forced into service because of the war.
Meanwhile, the Spitfire was an amazing design, but expensive. And they had to do some fancy stuff with the carbs to allow them to compete with the german injected engine planes.
In fact, as I’m typing this, I realize this whole thing is an exercise in futility because “best” can’t be nailed down. Technology constantly changes and, especially in wartime, designs come out that beat previous designs.
Heck, the zero was great partly because there was no extra weight for pilot protection. The Corsair was great except it couldn’t outturn a Zero, and get into a flat spin and you’ll learn why they called it the widowmaker.
I don’t see any as “best”. That said, there were a few that were terrible and should not have entered service. But at wartime sometimes you don’t get that luxury.
By 1944, the Japs were using different planes that we all seemed to call Zeros. The Zero was actually pretty much kaput by 1943, mostly due to the entry of P-38’s. The Japs still had good planes but the pilots were gone.
Fighter design involves many tradeoffs. With the zero, the Japanese maximized range in order to have a fighter able to cover large distances between islands of the Japanese mandate of WWI. Maximizing range came at the expense of ruggedness and armaments although they were able to make the zero nimble.
As one surviving zero pilot put it in a post-war interview, fighting in the Zero was like going to war wearing a bathing suit.