When it comes to managed switches, you should really go for one supported by the realtek target. The stock firmware will be as good as any of the other shit out there, but you can simply replace it with OpenWrt. That's worth the small extra cost IMHO. Which is paying for better hardware (RAM, flash, CPU) anyway.
This means moving up a small step from the "Plus" to the "Smart" swithces in Netgear-speak. I.e. GS308T instead of GS308E. The GS308T support was added a week ago: https://git.openwrt.org/?p=openwrt/openwrt.git;a=commit;h=c829bc1f2c3c47e230905864f2f5f8c759f88ce6
But take the usual care when buying hardware for OpenWrt: Model numbers are recycled by some vendors. For example the Netgear GS108Tv3 (which is the currently available variant) is supported, but the older v1/v2 were based on different hardware and will therefore never be.
Personally I like the ZyXEL GS1900 series. Most of these have presoldered UART headers as an extra bonus. I am using a GS1900-10HP which has a 77W PoE budget and two SFP ports. All working perfectly with OpenWrt. I would definitely recommend it, or the -8HP if you don't need fiber, for anyone looking for a small PoE switch.
I also have a GS108Tv3, which has the advantage that it can optionally be powered by PoE. But like other Netgear switches, this one requires soldering a header for console. It can be converted to OpenWrt without console access, though,