[lupinglade]

It's not always the price too, often enough the higher quality item can be cheaper, just less of a fancy package maybe. A lot of companies blow all their budget on advertising and packaging instead of product quality and research. Knowledge is key. Especially be careful in stores like TJ Maxx, Home-sense and such -- lots of lowest quality fancy packaged junk to be had there.

[jack_pp]

One example I'm aware of is headphones. A while back everyone thought Beats are the best because they were expensive and had good marketing but really they were shit and you could get much better quality for less price

[colanderman]

At the same time, in keeping with the theme of the article -- spend the $75 for a good (i.e. well-regarded for your use case) pair of headphones if you enjoy music. It is absolutely night and day compared to $10 crap.

[megameter]

I've swung towards the cheap end and am currently wearing some basic Sony over-ears.

I have more expensive gear. The value here is not really in the audio quality - which, apart from the most strenuous audio engineering flat-response-and-detailed-image-needed cases, is fine, really - but in being light and cheap and embracing that quality. It rattles a little when you hold it, but it's made to withstand a few drops, and it won't pressure your skull or force your neck out of posture with hours of use. The cable is soldered in but sturdy.

The $75 ones I've used always tend to end up with issues because they don't have these qualities. The cables are still soldered but of a lower thickness, and the rigidity of the frame makes them disconnect more readily. They pinch your ears and crush your skull. The quality is better but not enough to matter in everyday use - a good DAC and a low-noise environment makes more difference.

[lupinglade]

This is mainly because Beats headphones are just terrible at any price and a perfect example of all their budget going on marketing. Other headphones in the same price range or even below can be very good.

[joecool1029]

Beats/Bose were always like this. Selling the branding I mean, at least Beats had lineage of Monster producing a few decent units before they nudged them out of the picture.

Better example in the headphone world were high-end IEM's (Shure/Westone/Etymotics). Most of them were in the many hundreds of dollar range for good multi-driver units. In the past few years though Chinese manufacturers (KZ is one I can think of off the top of my head) sell their own lines on aliexpress/taobab using the same drivers for 10% of the cost.

I can't justify recommending the old names now to people, the value just isn't there (and most of the old big names stopped producing in US/EU since China turned out to have better QC). Why pay $200 for a double-driver Westone when I can recommend a 5-driver KZ unit for $60? I just don't get it.