Just be up front, I care for 3 yards in my neighborhood, including my own, totalling just short of 1 acre, which I mow weekly. Some of what I outline below may not apply to you if you are only mowing the standard 1/6 to 1/3 acre residential lawn.
I owned a Toro Recycler the past year, and recently sold it to purchase a Snapper Hi Vac. After subscribing to the benefits of mulching mowers 15 years ago, I never could get a mulching mower (tried several different mowers with all different blade designs available for each) to give me the single-pass cut quality I desired, so I finally gave up. Going forward I will run a standard side discharge and mow more often.
If you have hills, go for the Snapper or the Toro AWD. The Toro AWD has the blue handle in front of the personal pace handle bar which allows you to squeeze the personal pace handle to activate it rather than pushing. I did not find the AWD to be of any benefit over a standard RWD model, beyond having that blue handle. If the blue handle can be purchased separately and fitted to a standard RWD, go that route.
The Briggs EXi that came on my Toro was alright. I don't buy into the no oil changes marketing from Briggs, so I changed oil anyway. The air filter seemed to get dirty very quickly. Needed to change the air filter twice a year, and that is with blowing it out between mowings. The Briggs Professional engine air filters, from my previous experience with that air filter design, it can go a year before it even needs to be blown out under the same conditions, but I check it before each use regardless.
If you have to fit it in the trunk of a car with the trunk closed, the Toro is your mower. The handle bar folds easily, and it is lighter weight. The Snapper handlebar is not easily foldable because of the rigid speed selector rod, and it is heavier.
If you do not need to lift it frequently, the Snapper will give you a smoother experience. Between the Toro's lighter weight and seemingly shorter wheelbase (may be my imagination), the Toro transmitted more harshness(?) from uneven or rough ground back through the handlebars and up into my arms and shoulders. The Snapper just seems to glide across the same yards.
You should also consider your dealer, unless you work on the mowers yourself. The best euipment in the world is useless when it breaks if the dealer is useless. Make sure your dealer is certified to perform warranty work on both the mower AND the engine. Sounds ridiculous, I know. As it turned out, the dealer from whom I bought the Toro was not certified to perform warranty work on Briggs engines. If it had needed warranty work, I would have had to take it to his competition down the road -- the Snapper dealer. Fortunately the only warranty work I needed was a defective $5 valve cover gasket, which I replaced on my own.
Over all, the Snapper should last you much, much longer. I say "should" because, as with anything mechanical, you could always get a lemon. The design is decades old and people still run them 20, even 30 years later, just swapping the engines when they wear out. No matter how well I cared for the Toro Recycler, I only expected to get 3, maybe 4 years out of it before it got to a point where it was not cost effective to repair any longer vs buying new.
The better comparison would be the Snapper and the Toro Super Recycler, in terms of parts quality and potential longevity. The Toro Super Recyclers have metal wheel/drive assemblies which are greasable, whereas they are plastic and non-serviceable on the basic Recyclers.
