Playwright does use "real" web browsers (Chromium, Firefox, WebKit). It just supports specific versions, as otherwise it would be difficult to maintain. It runs them in headless mode, which most browsers support, and should behave exactly as a headed version would. You can start a test in headed mode if you want to see the browser window.
The era of custom headless browsers like PhantomJS, or Selenium/WebDriver for that matter, is dead, IMO. The Chrome DevTools Protocol is the modern standard API to interact with a browser programmatically.
Oh, OK! I misunderstood the comment entirely then. Thanks for correcting me there, especially since I was apparently too lazy to look for myself.
This does sound more promising then, if they've found new ways to add maintainability or QoL aspects to record/replay. As I said elsewhere, I think r/r gets a bad rap, and those sorts of improvements would increase the number of situations where it makes sense (at least for testing in incubation).
I think the mistake was in the comment you replied to, that suggested Playwright used custom browser builds.
I do recommend giving it a try. The web browser automation landscape is much more reliable these days for writing E2E tests than back when Selenium was state of the art.
The era of custom headless browsers like PhantomJS, or Selenium/WebDriver for that matter, is dead, IMO. The Chrome DevTools Protocol is the modern standard API to interact with a browser programmatically.