I too have just gone through the process of buying a new set of headphones, and yes I too took some time raking through a load of reviews before making my decision. I however did spend in the region of €350 on my in ears, so I was looking at rather the other end of the market.

Generally I have found Sony headphones to have relatively poor build quality (but then I am hard on headphones), I've never owned a pair of skull candies but I have listened to some and they seem okay to decent.

For people listening to mp3s or equivalent compressed music files I would generally recommend a pair of Sennheiser CX 300 II. They are a very decent pair of headphones, are very well built and tend to last. They will get almost everything out of your music player. If you are using an Apple product I certainly would never pay more than £50 for a pair of headphones as you would be just wasting your money.

Just be careful. It's a very slippery slope to becoming an audiophile and spending ridiculous amounts of money on your audio equipment.