The chief difference I've seen besides bling in helmets is the weight and whether or not it looks like a mushroom on your head or not. I use a relatively inexpensive visored Bell, personally and it does me fine and is among the highest rated helmets for safety, coming in ahead of a LOT of helmets 5-6 times the cost.
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. “He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”- Fredrick Nietzsche
"We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals." - Immanuel Kant