The Velmets (swedish)are probably the best, but you'll pay an arm and a leg for one if you can find one- a match prepped AR would be cheaper.
A step down from Valmets are AKs made by Krebs (American made). Very nice rifles but still cost as much or more than an AR-15.
On the other end of the spectrum are the WASRs- these are the ones readily available today. They were originally manufactured to take a low cap single stack magazine to get around the import ban, then subsequntly they are milled out by importers to take a standard AK magazine and have enough parts replaced with American made parts to make them 922 legal. They are known for really bad trigger slap because of the cheap trigger parts in them that aren't correctly made- these can be replaced to fix the problem for fairly cheap however. The rifles are functionable and are decently made otherwise. They cost about $250-400 depending on where you buy tham and what kind of stock configuration they have- folders usually cost more.
A good step or two above the WASRs is the SAR-1, these haven't been imported in a couple of years but were common 5 years or so ago. If you see one, they will cost about $100 more than a WASR.
Another AK, is a Russian sporting rifle known as the Saiga- these come in a variety of calibers including shotgun chamberings. I think these have been banned from import as well but can be found in a lot of places yet.
For burning up ammo, I still prefer the SKS, its much cheaper to buy, and is capable of better accuracy than the low end AKs.
I find it funny that people bring up enfields. Its like the poster asked them what flavor of syrup others like on their pancakes and others chime in that steak tastes good too.
AK-47 ???
