Welcome.
80s VCRs can make for neat antiques, but nothing usable.
J695EK form factor pays decent, but has way too many transport issues. However, it is just a lowly consumer VHS deck, so image quality is pretty crummy compared to even low-end S-VHS decks.
In PAL, a quality S-VHS with TBC is actually quite cheap, generally €300 to €600 range. That's low than the MSRP 20 years ago, and is about half of the new cost when you add in inflation over that time. S-VHS were never £80 to £120, and never will be. (Yes, never, because attrition will steady or elevate costs over time.)
You need to be very careful with Panasonic decks, as most are now failed. Be very wary of eBay
liars sellers, with few exceptions (reputable folks like VCRshop also sometimes sell on eBay).
USB is just a communication method. There are terrible cards using every comms methods. USB, PCI, PCIe, AGP, Firewire, Thunderbolt, etc. The quality of the card isn't determined by USB or non-USB. It just happens that most USB cards are cheap Chinese junk sold on eBay and
Amazon (and Temu and others). Old PCI cards were probably worse than USB is.
You're using a DVD recorder, compressed 4:2:0 mushy MPEG quality. It was great in the 2000s, not so much now, with our huge HD/4K TVs that show all the lovely blocks and smushy splostches. I mostly still approve of DVD as a cartoon collector, as animation is nowhere as harmed by the MEPg compression.
