I’ve been slowly upgrading my gear over the last several years. I went the cheap route for almost my entire life. My 2cents is this : it’s relative and justified to the user if a few things are taken into consideration. I’ll use an example.... I used to work in the cycling industry, and built high end racing bicycles for road cycling teams (like lance armstrong type bikes). There are your standard typical “road bikes” that start getting getting competitive on features and lightweight options around say $2k. After that you start clinging in price for performance upgrades/dropping the weight of the bike. Now the average user may or may not justify the cost of the weight being a few ounces lighter, but the avid racer is. After about $5k for a bike that weighs say 14.5 lbs, it generally costs about $1k to shed another 1lb off that bike. So for the weekend warriors, they need to decide if the technology/features, that were designed for the avid consumer, are worth it for their needs and/or how pleasant they want the experience to be when they do use it.
the same goes for the higher end gear companies. The r&d that is required to break away from what makes a cheap brand a cheap brand, costs money to develop. From my personal experience and in my humble opinion, yes. If you seek higher quality gear, to eliminate small annoying issues, this is what the little extra money buys. The r&d that addresses those little issues, to make your use and experience better.
I’ve been using First Lite now for the last few years and can honestly say I’m more than happy with just about every aspect of it.