New camper! What manufacturer would you recommend

6100 pounds dry will be closer to 7000 loaded for a long weekend with 900 pounds of TW. 900 plus 600 pounds of people plus 200 in the truck bed means that truck should have about 1700 pounds of available payload. Take a look at this sticker on the driver's door and note what it has for payload where mine says 2051:

7800 pounds is the max my husband's 2007 dodge pickup will tow. At least that is what the manual says. We don't want to reach the max pulling weight. Combined our family weighs 600 pounds but why does that matter? We won't be riding in the travel trailer while it is being pulled. We don't plan on taking long trip with the camper. Maybe 500 miles at the longest. We are planning on buying a sway bar package.

We put money to hold a Jayco 287bhsw for a week while we think about it. The show/sale price was $19900 and with tax and tow package is came out to around $22,000. I am happy with the trailer as I have always heard Jayco was a great brand of trailers. We came home to do some more research and discovered that Jayco isn't the only manufacturer that makes their trailers with plywood instead of particle board. For the price the Jayco is barebone compared to springer and wildwood. No outside kitchen, less cabinets, no hydraulics on the storage under the bed, no electric jacks.

Yes a slide is something we really want. Do these things break often? If so how much does it cost to fix after the warranty expires? I'm sure this camper we plan to keep at least 5 years. As the kids grow up we know our needs will change. This is why I am asking is it is important to buy a good brand of trailer or one that has more features we like.

I will research a Shasta. I have never heard of those. And also a winnebego

Look for a holdover Winnebago 2451bhs Minnie. Better quality than most. Ultralight.

Airstream and Bigfoot.

We tow a really nice Shasta 18ft bunkhouse with a half ton truck. Ours was $11k new, so it is well under your budget. They do make larger models and seem comparable in price to the brands you have mentioned.

Shasta seems well made and has some nice quality flooring & windows. Tank capacity is fairly large in comparison to other 18ft. models. Full specs are in my profile.

We started camping with a very bare-bones featured travel trailer, so there are little things on our new Shasta that seem luxurious in comparison.

Some features to look for that we like -

The electric awning. Manually unrolling/retracting it was ok on our previous TT, but pushing a button to retract the awning when the skies darken for an unexpected rainstorm is a nice piece-of-mind feature.

The next feature I like in comparison is the electric water heater - push a switch and it is lit. No more sitting outside in the rain trying to manually light the water heater.

Another small feature we found we like is the exterior lighting. We often leave after work to go camping and unhook in the dark. The light on the front of the TT above the stone guard that shines on the tongue was an unexpected nicety. The amber patio light can be turned on/off inside and it is nice for a quick look around after dark.

Our Shasta has four manual stabilizer jacks, but a Camco jack socket and the cordless drill we always bring in the toolkit makes short work of raising or lowering the jacks.

We opted for no slides for a few reasons. It is one more thing to go wrong as per above poster. We wanted something "road friendly" that we could hop inside and use at a rest stop, or overnight at a Cracker Barrel type stop that would have plenty of room to move around in without needing to extend slides. No slides was a good choice for the two of us. Since you are four people, I respect that you feel you need slides, though.

Need more details on that half ton you plan to tow with. Is 7800 pounds the tow rating? How much payload do you have? How much does the family weigh?

6000 pound dry TT means about 7k loaded with 900 pounds of tongue weight. If you have 1300 pounds of payload, a pickup bed full of bikes, toys, etc, and 500 pounds of people inside, the tow vehicle is over at least one of its other ratings.

Skip the extended warranty.

Jayco has been around for ___ years (seems like 100) so they must be doing something right. The more `toys' you add to a rig (like electric jacks) the more cost and the more things can go wrong. To save your sanity looking at the various manufacturers stick with Jayco until you've exhausted their product line.
You might have to go used for $20K.
No, we are not paid by Jayco and, as you can see from the signature, don't even have one.