Where you absolutely refuse to go the cheap way.
For me its deodorant. Everything else I’ve found but my chosen brand fails me.
Yeah. Bose spends a lot on marketing, whereas high end headphone brands (Hifiman, Audeze, Beyerdynamic, Sennheiser, etc.) spend more on R&D.
I have a pair of relatively cheap yamaha studio monitor headphones that are actually pretty great! ($80) Most headphones will also sound much better when driven properly with an external DAC, especially the higher end ones.
I plan on going to the $200 range next as I’m not too satisfied with the bass of these things, It’s definitely there, but it doesn’t go too loud before it gets distorted on the lower ranges,