[suddenclarity]

There are and you can get cheap noname Chinese ones for as low as $10.

Unfortunately most of them are terrible. I've played with it on and off for years and even gotten individual tools for $100+ but still have issues. It's a bit of a mess with PAL/NTSC, different recommended settings, and at the end of the day you still need a high quality VCR to extract all the data. Those tend to go for hundreds of dollars here. You also need a time base corrector (some VHS have them built in I believe) to avoid dropping frames and causing desync.

A common suggestion is to just get a VHS->DVD recorder and then rip the DVD. You lose out on quality but it usually works and will save you a ton of time.

The suggestion by OP is probably if you truly want to maximize the quality.