If I had seen the posts earlier, I would say as a general rule, the more expensive a product is, the more likely it is to outperform those that are less expensive. There will always be outliers that outperform their price point. There will also be products that are marked up due to a name brand, which for the 3 that instantly come to mind, 1 stands out as being one of the best in noise cancellation, and the another you are very much paying for fashion, which for any thing you can physically see, matters. Look at the amount of people that got upset thinking that the X1 might come in a variety of colors but not include black, fashion. And the third, well, lets just be happy it has an amazing warranty, and a couple of actually good cans. I would never say that price = quality. Lets take food for example, disregarding taste (and portion, type of food, etc.,) you can make the argument that the more expensive the meal, the more likely it is to be higher quality than meals that cost less. Yes, there will be outliers, but in my experience, this has mostly held true.
Now, I'm in no way going to try to convince anyone to change their views, I never expect that to work anyways. But to me at least, this is one of those areas where I really think that higher price ranges hold products that outperform lesser price ranges. The key is to stop looking at individual pieces, and look at the grand scheme of things. Do I expect headphones in general from the $50-100 to be beaten by headphones in a higher price bracket in general? Yes.
