There is also HA’s native zigbee integration “Zigbee Home Automation” or “ZHA.”
I run both ZHA and Zigbee2MQTT. They each have pros and cons. Like @francisp I prefer z2m (reasons listed here).
I would encourage you to get two coordinators and experiment with both side by side. Once decided, the second coordinator can be re-flashed with router software and added to your zigbee mesh.
You sound like you might be interested in some lower level tinkering, so be sure to look at the ZHA Toolkit addon while evaluating ZHA.
For z2m, I strongly recommend a TI cc2652p based coordinator.