I bet I spend 20 or so hours a year researching headphones. My current daily drivers are $11 earbuds and a pair of $80 cans for focused listening. As with most things, there are a vocal few who do obsesses and come across as elitist, but I have a hunch that people like me are the (largely) silent majority.
I'll spend a little on earbuds (AirPods, actually), but I feel you on the headphones. I do a lot of audio and video work, and after extensive research over the last ~decade I've just got literally half a dozen pairs of Sony MDR-V6's around; they're $100, they sound pleasant and also reasonably representative (though not as representative as my monitors, which is to be expected!), and unlike the Beyerdynamic DT-990s they actually fit on my head (I am a problem for hat-makers).
