I've learned not to judge knives by their price. For me it's more about how well it cuts, how well the steel holds up, handle comfort and so forth. The overall design matters more to me than extreme fit and finish, S30V blade steel and country of origin. Some of my most often carried knives are a Byrd Cara Cara in G10, Opinel #10 and #8, Mora 760mg, various SAKs and so on.
If I like a knife enough, I'll pay 100$ for it. In the woods I could get by with a 20$ hatchet to chop, but I prefer a Kuhkuri by far and will pay an additional 60 or 80 dollars for one. On the other hand, while the Manix was one of my favorite knives, I prefer the Byrd Cara Cara overall so that's the knife I kept to EDC while I traded the Manix.
Price has very little relevence to performance in my experience. The Cara Cara works just as well as any 100$+ Spyderco I've used. The design of a SAK or Opinel blade lets them cut better out of the box than many expensive folders I've gone through. My mora was 8$ and my Ontario SP2 was 45$, but the latter required a lot of modification to even be usable in my opinion, and it still does not come close to matching the cutting performance of the mora.
There is crap in various price ranges put out by different companies. Some of it is due to poor heat treats or flimsy construction, others simply design blades that will not cut worth a damn and handles that hurt to hold onto. I've found what works for me and most of it happens to be cheap. Again, for me design and real world function matter more to me than many of the things that drive the price up in a knife. The mora I speak of is a crude factory made knife with strips of plastic hanging off the handle from the injection molding, but it's served me as well as my curly birch and reindeer antler puukkos costing 6x its price.
